In a development that the pundits did not see coming, President Donald Trump won the majority of votes in states like Florida and Texas with the highest COVID death rates. 

Despite recently suggesting the country is “rounding a corner” on the pandemic, new cases have increased 41% with an average of 72,000 new cases a day over the past few weeks. 

In the counties hit the hardest by the coronavirus, the president outperformed his 2016 run with a 4% jump in votes – increasing from 50.1% to 54.1% in 2020. 

Of the fourteen counties nationally that have had positive case rates of over 5% in the past month, only three cast more votes for Biden than Trump.  All fourteen of these counties are in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Kansas or Wisconsin. 

The three counties in Biden’s column are on Native American reservations and have Native American populations of at least 87%, a demographic which has tended to lean Democrat.