The District of Columbia is not a state. It is the federal district seated on land ceded by Maryland in 1801, and under the 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961, it casts three electoral votes — the number of the least-populous state — while sending one non-voting delegate to the U.S. House, currently Eleanor Holmes Norton. The District first voted for president in 1964 and chose the Democratic candidate by 71.0 points, and it has given the Democratic nominee the widest margin of any jurisdiction in the country in every cycle since. In 2024 that margin was 83.8 points, Kamala Harris taking 90.3 percent of the vote to Donald Trump’s 6.5.
No state comes close to that figure, and the reason is geography as much as politics. The District is a single dense city of 681,294 on 61 square miles, with no surrounding suburban or rural counties inside its lines to pull the other way — the rural and exurban ground that gives states their Republican margins lies across the river in Virginia and Maryland. The District is also Black-plurality, 41.6 percent, against 36.5 percent White and 11.9 percent Hispanic, and the African American population it carries is the demographic core of the Democratic vote nationally. Its widest margins on record came in 2016 and 2020, each at 86.8 points.
It is at once one of the country’s most affluent and most schooled places. Median household income was $109,870 in the 2024 ACS, against $80,734 nationally, and 64.2 percent of adults hold a bachelor’s degree, 38.0 percent a graduate or professional degree — shares near the top of any jurisdiction. Yet affluence sits beside hardship: 15.4 percent of residents and 22.8 percent of children live in poverty, a gap that follows the line between the wealthier, Whiter wards west of the Anacostia and the Black-majority wards to its east. Even here the 2024 margin slipped about three points from 2020’s 86.8, part of the national move toward Trump.
Akashic