Rhode Island echoes how Americans voted nationwide.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — There's a striking pattern in the way Rhode Islanders cast their presidential votes in Tuesday's election.

All of the communities that touch saltwater voted for Clinton, and all but four of the state's inland communities went for Trump, a Providence Journal review of state voting records found.

"That looks a lot like the country, doesn't it?" said June S. Speakman, a political science professor at Roger Williams University. "The two coasts are blue, and the heartland is red."

Probing a little deeper, U.S. Census Bureau figures show that households in the Trump towns have an edge of about $14,000 in median income, $67,400 to $53,900, over communities that voted for Clinton.

But the gap wasn't uniform: Four of the five communities with the highest median household incomes voted for Clinton, as did seven of the eight communities with the lowest incomes.

Essentially, Clinton drew her support from the wealthiest and poorest places, while Trump drew his from the middle.

"That pretty well parallels what happened nationally," said Gary Sasse, director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University.

Another remarkable characteristic of Tuesday's election: Voter turnout in Rhode Island for Tuesday's presidential election was the lowest in at least 16 years.

A total of 58.7 percent of the U.S. citizens living in Rhode Island who were old enough to vote cast ballots for president. That's lower than the 59.2 percent who did so in the 2000 contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore and every election since. It's markedly behind the 62.5 percent who cast ballots in 2008, when President Obama was first elected.

"The difference in turnout might just be attributed to the negative tenor of the campaign, [which] turned people off," said Corey L. Brettschneider, a political science professor at Brown University.

Speakman agreed.

"It was so negative, so off-putting," she said. "Folks just said, 'There's nothing in it for me, so I'm staying home.' To many people, there was nothing to vote for, only something to vote against. That's not a mobilizing message."

The 2008 election stood out because Obama mobilized voters, especially young ones, Speakman said. But that faded by 2012, when Obama ran for reelection.

"All the young people who got so fired up in 2008 stayed home and continue to do so," she said.

"It just appears that 2008 was an outlier because the message and the messenger was so unique," Sasse said. "The message of hope and change, the first African-American running for president, inclined people to get out and vote."

The opposite was true this year, Sasse said. "A lot of people were turned off by the tops of both the Democratic and Republican tickets," he said, adding that Democrat Hillary Clinton suffered from an "enthusiasm gap," as he put it. "The Democratic candidate wasn't effective in getting out her vote."

Taken in raw votes, Rhode Island's 2016 turnout was the second highest since 2000, its 460,559 votes for president trailing only 2008's 469,767.

Another reason the turnout declined is a rise in the number of adult citizens living in Rhode Island, a reflection of a relatively stable population in that period that has shifted toward more adults and fewer children.

Researchers measure turnout as a percentage of adult citizens rather than a percentage of registered voters because state voting lists can be dramatically inflated as a result of the difficulties in detecting and removing people who have moved or died.