photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

A woman shops while a voter casts a ballot at a grocery store, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Lawrence.

Story updated at 9:10 a.m. Nov. 6:

Since it seems no one is claiming that this election was stolen — perhaps an overlooked election victory from Tuesday — it seems accurate to say that America has moved towards Donald Trump.

So too for Lawrence and Douglas County.

Douglas County continues to be one of the strongest bulwarks against Trump in America — but its wall isn’t as thick as it used to be. Trump in Tuesday’s election won a larger share of the Douglas County vote than he did in 2020. Further, he won a larger share than he did in 2016. In fact, what the numbers show is that Trump became a little more popular in Douglas County in each of his last two elections.

Popularity, of course, is relative, and no one can plausibly claim that Trump is actually popular in Douglas County. He lost bigly in the county — but not as bigly as he had in his other two elections. Here’s a look at the numbers.

• 2016: Clinton: 31,195 votes, 61.13%; Trump: 14,688 votes, 28.78%; Third party and write ins: 6,703, 10.09%

• 2020: Biden: 40,785 votes, 68.55%; Trump: 17,286 votes, 29.05%; Third party and write ins: 1,424 votes, 2.39%

• 2024, which are still unofficial until certified next week: Harris: 36,859, 67.15%; Trump, 16,580, 30.21%; Third party and write-ins: 1,450 votes, 2.64%.

Something else jumps out from those numbers, too: There were a lot fewer Douglas County voters in 2024 than there were in 2020. Total ballots cast in 2024 were 55,204, according to the Douglas County Clerk’s office. In 2020, the county set a record with 60,150. That is a little more than an 8% decline in an election that Harris and her team were counting on their supporters to treat as the most important of their lives.

Unofficially, voter turnout was 66.4% in Douglas County this year. That’s down from 73.01% in 2020, but up slightly from 63.27% in 2016.

Both of those Douglas County numbers — Trump’s percentage of vote won and voter turnout — might make Douglas County a relevant example in a larger national story. Democrats were counting on high turnout and red Republican areas becoming a little less red. Instead, the opposite happened here. Turnout was lower and the shade of Democratic blue lightened slightly.

Digging into the numbers more deeply, there was very clear rural/urban divide in Douglas County. Trump did not win any full precinct in the city limits of Lawrence. He won a section of precinct 56. That is primarily a rural precinct covering Kanwaka Township west of Lawrence. But a small section of the precinct is in Lawrence city limits, and Trump won all 15 votes that were in that section of the precinct.

But when you truly get outside the Lawrence city limits, it was a much different story. I’ve counted 39 precincts or sections of precincts that are outside the Lawrence city limits. It looks like Trump won 25 of those.

Preliminarily, it appears Trump won every Baldwin City-based precinct section, every Eudora-based precinct section and three of the four Lecompton-based precinct sections. Many townships and unincorporated rural communities also went primarily for Trump. Those include Clinton, Big Springs, and Vinland. The townships closest to the Lawrence city limits — Wakarusa, which basically surrounds the city, and Grant, which is just north of north Lawrence — were more split between Trump and Harris.

This rural/urban divide wasn’t unexpected. There were strong areas of Trump support outside of the Lawrence city limits. It will take some more digging into the numbers to see if such rural support increased significantly this year. Regardless, though, the numbers are a good reminder that Douglas County is not all of one mind.