The New York Times Shows Seattle’s Liberal Bubble

We're in a bubble.

Did you know you must drive 33 minutes from The Stranger’s office on Capitol Hill to Renton to get to the nearest precinct that voted for Trump in the 2016 election? Did you know Hillary Clinton only won Bill Gates’s voting precinct in Medina by 55 percent?

I had no idea until I started exploring this new, crazy detailed interactive map from The New York Times that breaks down the 2016 presidential election votes precinct by precinct, giving us a highly detailed look at how our country elected a sexual predator.

The New York Times broke out the presidential votes by voting precinct, the geographic units that are used by the census and in places where people still vote in person. Voting precincts are probably the smallest political boundaries drawn up in our country and there are lots of them, over 2,600 in King County alone.

That gives this New York Times tool the ability to cut up voting patterns in a much finer detail than just looking at the presidential race by county, city, or even neighborhood. With this data we can see differences between tiny areas.

Compare the eight square blocks around The Stranger’s office on 11th and Pine and the voting precinct to our north surrounding Cal Anderson Park, and you’ll see a change in third party preferences. The Stranger’s precinct gave 27 votes to the Libertarian Gary Johnson, while Cal Anderson’s precinct gave 12 votes to Jill Stein. The persistent cloud of pot smoke emanating from the park must be clouding judgement for some Stein voters up there.

There’s lots to dive into with this interactive map, drag your cursor east from Seattle and feel a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach as you see the hundreds of miles of deep red Trump voters stretch out before you. Or just focus on Seattle and see how we are living in a deep blue bubble.