The Most Anti-Trump Precinct?
This Berkeley, CA precinct produced one of 2016's most unique election results
Berkeley — both the university and the city — is widely known for its political progressivism. Indeed, in 2020, the city’s residents handed Biden his largest percentage margin of victory of any city over 100 thousand residents, with a whopping 94% to Trump’s 4% (narrowly beating out Detroit, which gave Trump 5% of the vote). In 2016, with a number of progressive would-be Democrats defecting and voting for third party presidential candidates, Berkeley was a rare location where Trump actually finished third — his 3% of the vote placed him behind the Green Party’s Jill Stein, who won almost 5% of the vote, one of her best performances in the country (it’s also a rare place where Stein finished ahead of Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson).
But within Berkeley lies a smaller yet even more incredible discovery.
Though Berkeley progressivism is most commonly associated with student activist and affluent white residents, it’s the city’s communities of color — which make up almost exactly half of its population as of the 2020 census — that power some of its strongest left-wing victories.
Southwest and South Berkeley, currently represented by Council Districts 2 and 3, respectively, are home to the city’s largest concentration of Black residents and second largest concentration of Hispanic/Latino residents. In 2016, they recorded not only Trump’s worst performances in the city but also the best results for Stein and for minor socialist candidate Gloria La Riva of the Peace and Freedom Party. They also produced some of the best results for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential primary, awarding him nearly 50% of the vote to Biden’s roughly 15%.
While Trump still managed to finish in third place in most of Berkeley that year, including these more diverse areas, there was one southwest precinct — specifically, precinct 208920, containing a few hundred households bordered by Sacramento St, California St, Ashby Ave, and Harmon St — where Trump incredibly finished fifth place. Yes, behind four other candidates.
In this precinct, which contains 761 residents as of 2020, of which roughly 600 are eligible voters, and which cast 391 presidential ballots in 2016, Trump could only manage a measly 3 votes, amounting to less than 1% of the vote. This placed him behind not only Clinton (355 votes) and Stein (20 votes) but also Johnson and La Riva, who each picked up 5 votes. Trump’s standing put him level with valid write-ins (if write-in votes for non-certified candidates were counted, it’s likely they would outnumber Trump votes in the precinct as well).
While I have not combed through data from each of the hundreds of thousands of precincts throughout the United States, it’s fairly likely that this is the only one in the country where Trump (or either major party candidate, for that matter) finished fifth. I’m almost certain it’s the only such precinct of reasonable size (some precincts with tiny populations produce unique results, but they rarely exceed a single-digit number of votes, let alone nearly 400).
Unsurprisingly, the precinct is one of the city’s most diverse. As of the 2020 census, 33% of its residents are non-Hispanic white, 28% are Black, 22% are Hispanic/Latino, and 17% are Asian. Almost certainly, voters of all races were more likely to opt for a third-party candidate here than for the Republican nominee. Behold a truly breathtaking case of political polarization at its most far-reaching!