Inside the numbers: How Butler County voted in Tuesday’s presidential election
Only one precinct in Butler County supported Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris more than the Republican candidate and president-elect Donald Trump in Tuesday’s election, according to unofficial results.
In Butler County, which has historically supported Republican candidates in presidential races, only the voters in the Cranberry Township West 2 precinct supported Vice President Harris more than Trump.
In that particular precinct, 1,129 votes were cast for Harris, while 1,117 were cast for Trump, unofficial results show. She received 49.65% of the precinct’s support and Trump received 49.12% of the total votes. Another 1.23% went to other candidates.
The county, as a whole, supported Trump, playing a part in awarding the Keystone State’s 19 electoral votes to the former president and edging him toward the White House win. Trump was declared the winner of the Tuesday election early Wednesday morning, Nov. 6.
Trump received nearly double the support that Harris received in Butler County — where in July he was grazed by a bullet while speaking at the Butler Farm Show grounds — with 79,147 votes (65.61%) to her 40,046 votes (33.2%).
Still, Harris managed to perform slightly better in Butler County than President Joe Biden did four years ago, as Biden pulled in 37,508 votes that year, for 32.93% of the county’s vote.
The success of Trump in Butler County and Pennsylvania came as no surprise to Republican J.D. Longo, mayor of Slippery Rock Borough.
“I fully expected it,” Longo said. “If you spent the time that I spent during this cycle knocking on doors and making phone calls and volunteering … you would have known the level of motivation and excitement and hope for another Trump presidency.”
Cathy Lalonde, chairwoman of the Butler County Democratic Committee, said the local party tried as hard as it could to gain support for Harris.
“We knocked on a lot of doors and made a lot of phone calls and did all the work we had to do,” Lalonde said. “It’s just that the tide has changed.”
The precinct most supportive of Trump over Harris was in Karns City, where 87.64% of votes were for Trump. The borough saw 78 residents support Trump, and a mere 10 cast ballots in support of Harris.
Adams Township, however, made a larger impact with the most votes per precinct cast for Trump in the Adams Township 1 precinct. Unofficial results show 1,877 votes for Trump compared to 1,376 for Harris. Roughly 57% of the votes in that precinct went toward the Republican.
Seven Butler County precincts in Butler County saw more than 80% of voters support Trump. In addition to Karns City, these were the precincts in Fairview Township, Parker Township, Venango Township, Washington Township, Bruin and Petrolia.
The lone precinct — Cranberry Township West 2 — that supported Harris more than Trump in Cranberry Township was surrounded largely by other precincts with more than 40% of the votes coming in for Harris.
Cranberry Township East 3, West 1 and West 3-7 saw less than 60% of voters supporting Trump — and 40% or higher supporting Harris. Three precincts in the township — Cranberry Township East 1 and 2 and West 8 — supported Trump at higher rates though, ranging from 60.46% to 61.82%
Harris also garnered comparatively more support in city of Butler, Zelienople, Seven Fields, Valencia, Harmony and Slippery Rock Borough. Most precincts in those areas saw less than 60% of voters support Trump.
Only one precinct in the city of Butler saw more than 60% of voters support Trump; the rest ranged from 58.37% to 51.08%. Harris saw more than 38% of voters cast ballots in her favor in all precincts.
In the last presidential election, Butler County also saw only one precinct go blue, but it was a different location.
In Tuesday’s election, Harris wasn’t able to carry Slippery Rock Borough, the one precinct in Butler County that outgoing President Biden did manage to carry in the 2020 election. Whereas Biden won the borough 618 to 531 in 2020, Trump beat Harris 668 to 552 in 2024.
Longo said he believes the voters of Butler County, the state of Pennsylvania and America as a whole are largely fatigued with the last four years of the Biden administration.
“People have voted for President Trump because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have destroyed our ability to put food on the table and put gas in our tanks,” Longo said. “Their failed leadership could not be afforded for another four years. That was the primary reason.”
In this election, Trump continued a nearly-uninterrupted run of Republican success in presidential elections in the county. Dating back 108 years, Butler County has sided with the Republican candidate in all but one presidential election — 1964, when voters sided with Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater.
Even in elections where the Democratic candidate won handily, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936 and Barack Obama in 2008, Butler County voters sided with the Republican opponents.
In Tuesday’s election, most precincts saw less than 2% of votes for third party candidates, but the borough of Cherry Valley was a notable outlier.
The precinct in northeastern Butler County saw 5.13% of its votes for a candidate other than Harris and Biden. Unofficial results indicate that those votes all went to Jill Stein, a Green Party candidate. The borough saw 39 votes counted as of Tuesday night.
More than 2% of the vote went to someone else in Concord Township, Chicora, Zelienople 1 and 3, Bruin, and Fairview Borough.
West Sunbury and Petrolia didn’t support anyone besides Trump or Harris, unofficial results show.
The numbers above are based on unofficial results from the Butler County Bureau of Elections as reported Tuesday evening.
