Hurricane Helene has devastated large portions of the Southeast, including dozens of counties in the key presidential swing states of Georgia and North Carolina.
The states are vowing to proceed with voting, with some minor modifications, but it’s unclear how the displacement and property damage will ultimately impact who votes and how. What is clear is that most of the affected areas voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020, an NPR analysis finds.
Response to the hurricane, and the threat of Hurricane Milton, has become important to the presidential candidates, with less than a month of voting left. Vice President Harris and Trump have visited the area. As Harris vows she and President Biden will provide all federal assistance necessary, Trump has slammed their response and spread misleading and false information about available aid.
In 2020, almost 2.4 million votes were cast in the 82 counties that FEMA has now designated as places where residents qualify for some form of assistance in the two states. And in each state, Trump won a majority of the voters in those counties in the last presidential election.
Here's a look at how that breaks down:
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In Georgia, Trump won 57.3% of the vote from the 53 affected counties – 504,393 votes to President Biden’s 375,700.
More than 880,000 people voted from these counties in 2020, more than 1 out of every 6 votes cast in the state.
Trump won 46 of the counties to Biden’s six, but it’s not unusual for a Republican to win far more counties than a Democrat, because Democrats’ votes are concentrated in populous cities and suburbs.
In the 2020 election, for example, Trump won 2,588 counties to Biden’s 551 overall, according to the Brookings Institution. When adding New England townships to those counties, it was 3,198 to 1,380 (and four ties), according to the AP. Biden still won by 7 million votes because there are 67 million more people in those Biden-won counties than in counties Trump won.
Of the counties affected by Helene in Georgia, Biden won those with the more populous Savannah and Augusta, but the broad swath of the storm's impact meant that hundreds of thousands were affected in rural areas critical to Trump’s support.
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In North Carolina, where the destruction is more severe and the Trump campaign is calling for more voter access, Trump won 51.6% of the affected counties compared to Biden’s 48.4% – 783,330 to 735,009.
More than 1.5 million people cast votes from the 29 affected counties in North Carolina in 2020. That’s more than 1 out of every 4 voters (27.5%) in the state.
Mecklenburg County, home to the heavily Democratic city of Charlotte, was added to FEMA’s list of impacted counties this past week. Before FEMA included Mecklenburg County, Trump had won 62.9% of the vote in those affected Western North Carolina counties.
Trump won 26 counties to Biden’s three in the affected area in North Carolina overall. Among those counties Biden won is Buncombe, home to Asheville. Its more than 150,000 voters broke 60%-39% for Biden.
NOTE: The analysis above draws names of counties from maps and press releases issued by FEMA. For Georgia, here’s a map from Friday and a lists of affected counties issued Sunday. For North Carolina, here’s FEMA’s map as of Friday, as well as a list from Sept. 26.
Raw vote totals and percentages come from official tallies from the Georgia secretary of state website and North Carolina’s state board of elections database.
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