You can see a few areas like this: There’s an arc of Democratic strength across the interior South. This is the old “Black Belt,” named for the fertile soil that gave rise to cotton plantations. These areas are still populated by a high percentage of African-Americans even 150 years after the end of slavery, and they’re predominantly Democratic today.

The other area is in the Hispanic and Native American areas of the Southwest.

Toni What about the differences between 2012 and 2016? One relatively sudden shift is that Mormons have turned against Donald Trump. Clinton now actually has a chance to win Utah (as does the independent candidate Evan McMullin). And there are also relatively large Mormon populations in some of the states neighboring Utah.

Nate Yes, I think you’ll see a shift toward Clinton in the Mormon areas of Utah, eastern Idaho and a few adjacent counties elsewhere in the region. I would guess that Clinton at least wins Salt Lake County (which includes Salt Lake City), Summit County (an affluent, well-educated, relatively liberal county that includes Park City), Grand County (which includes Moab, an outdoorsy town that’s the gateway to all of the great national parks in the southern part of the state), and San Juan County, which has a large Native American population.

And I’ll be fascinated to see where McMullin breaks though. Can he win Utah County, which includes Provo? It voted 88 percent for Mitt Romney last time, and Donald Trump is just a terrible fit there. He got 9 percent there in the Republican primary.

Toni The far bigger difference between now and 2012, as you’ve written about extensively, is between the education levels of white Americans. And it has a direct bearing on recent polls that show Trump very competitive or ahead in states like Iowa and Ohio. President Obama did better than a lot of people thought among Northern working-class whites in 2012, and Trump is taking some of those voters.