The editor of the Independent noted in his Jan. 14 editorial page column “that 2,144 citizens of Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro, and Provincetown voted for Trump on Nov. 3.” He didn’t go on to analyze how big a share of local voters that raw number represented, how the proportion of voters who preferred the incumbent to Democrat Joe Biden varied among the four towns of the Outer Cape, or how these local shares compared to those elsewhere on the Cape and across Massachusetts.
An analysis of those numbers reveals a fascinating pattern: looking only at the 12 Cape Cod towns along Route 6, the Cape’s backbone, the farther from the Cape Cod Canal you go, the lower the percentage of Trump voters.
As one can see on the accompanying map, Trump’s vote shares were far from uniform across the Outer Cape. As Route 6 winds from Provincetown, through Truro and Wellfleet, to Eastham, the percentage of Trump voters steadily rises: from 7.0 percent at the beginning, to 19.3 and 19.9 percent in the middle, and finally to 28.2 percent at the end.
What was more surprising was that, as Route 6 continues through eight more towns on its way to the Sagamore Bridge, the percentage of Trump voters continues to increase steadily from town to town without a single exception: Orleans, 30.5 percent; Brewster, 31.6 percent; Harwich, 36.1 percent; Dennis, 38.3 percent; Yarmouth, 39.1 percent; Barnstable, 40.2 percent; Sandwich, 43.3 percent; and Bourne, 44.8 percent.
Three Cape Cod towns are not crossed by Route 6: Chatham, 36.8 percent; Mashpee, 40.1 percent; and Falmouth, 33.9 percent.
When compared to the rest of the state’s cities and towns, it turns out that those on the Cape gave Trump very similar shares of their votes. The median vote share for Trump among the Cape’s 15 towns was Chatham’s, 36.8 percent, while his median vote share among all of the state’s cities and towns was almost identical: North Andover’s 36.6 percent. (When a set of numbers is listed from smallest to largest, the median is the one in the middle; in this case, Chatham ranked eighth among the Cape’s 15 towns, while North Andover ranked 176th among the state’s 351 municipalities.)
Returning to our four Outer Cape communities: Provincetown’s share of Trump voters was not only the lowest on the Cape, it was the second lowest in the entire state. (Provincetown’s 7.0 percent was just above Cambridge’s 6.6 percent.) Truro and Wellfleet were among only 38 Massachusetts cities and towns (less than 11 percent of the total) where Trump got fewer than one-fifth of the votes. And even though Eastham’s percentage of Trump voters was four times that of Provincetown’s, it was still lower than those of 254 other Massachusetts municipalities.
What lies behind the variation in support for Trump among the Cape’s towns, and its remarkably consistent gradient? Discuss among yourselves. [Readers are invited to send their theories on this question for publication in next week’s edition. —Editor]
Note: All statistics in this article are from a sortable table on WBUR’s website that provides election results for every city and town in the state.
Jim Campen of Wellfleet and Cambridge worked with the Movement Voter Project to support grassroots organizing that was crucial in keeping Trump’s vote shares below those of Biden in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.