This map shows all the towns in the U.S. with the same name as a presidential candidate

Who traveled back in time to name all these towns after the 21 men and women trying to be president in 2016?

We made this map by taking a list of every city and town in the United States, and then writing a quick script to filter all the locations containing some permutation of presidential candidates’ last names. There were 109 locations in all.


This raises an obvious question. Which candidate has the most municipalities bearing their name? Don’t worry, we looked into that, too.


In a shocking case of geographical bias, Hillary Clinton leads presidential candidates with towns sharing her last name at 33. Unlike many of the other candidates, her list contains 26 towns just named “Clinton,” and nothing else. No thanks to Hillary and Bill, most of these towns are probably named for George or DeWitt.

Rand Paul’s 24 towns are mostly a benefit of his having a first name for a last name. In addition to 12 Saint Pauls, there are also a slew of variations on the name, like Pauline, Paulina and Paul Smiths.

Jeb Bush and Ben Carson are next on the list, with Carson benefiting from the many towns in the West named after Kit Carson, and Bush benefiting from the fact that his name is also a term for a common, nondescript form of shrubbery.

Lindsey Graham’s total is noteworthy because eight of the nine towns are just “Graham,” with nothing else (the ninth is Grahamsville, New York). This also may be the highest Lindsey Graham has appeared on any list since he started his campaign.

Finally, no one appears to have ever named a town Chafee, Lessig, O’Malley, Christie, Fiorina, Huckabee(!), Jindal, Kasich, Pataki, Rubio, Santorum or Trump. But Trump’s people might be making some calls and cutting a check right now to address that.

Hopefully, we were able to help you make a better decision for who should become president, at least from a geomantic point of view.

 
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