MA Senate - Special Election Results thread

[nclib]

I can't believe it. I know Coakley ran an awful campaign, but I would have thought that Massachusetts of all places would be able to trust the Democrats.

Working-class revolt centered against those in power.

It will take some work to see the differential swings to see just who "revolted" the most, and by how much. What we do know, is that academic areas, and rich liberal areas, hardly revolted at all vis a vis Obama.  Some, but not much, relatively speaking, as to the rich liberal areas.

The New York Times has a swing map by town (from 2008 presidential) this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/01/19/us/politics/massachusetts-election-map.html?hp

I don't want to get into another class-definition argument, but what the map suggests to me is that much as we like to pay attention to ye olde mill towns , the Dems have at least as much of a problem is in sort of lower-middle areas - the "exurbs" and the like, where people have never been too loyal to either party.

For the record:

Highest swing

North Attleborough 22.5
Plainville 21.8
Southbridge 21.3
Wrentham 20.9
Athol 20.7
Tolland 20.7

Lowest swing

Cummington 0.7
Pelham 1.9
Williamstown 2.2
Leverett 2.2
Shutesbury 2.5

-------

Aside from Wrentham being Brown's hometown, anyone know much about any of these places?

[nclib]

Here's my table of vote by CD.  I allocated the vote for the 4 municipalities that are in two CDs (Boston, Fall River, Hanson, Wayland) by number of precincts per CD.  That may or may not be accurate.  If someone has a better formula for breaking the towns up, please let me know.

If I'm reading this correctly, MA-8 had the highest swing and MA-10 the lowest, which seems to contradict the county/town maps.

If anyone wants to compile Boston's results by CD, here is a list of precincts. (not sure if precinct data have come out yet)

I don't think the Republicans should get too worked up about gaining a House seat, not only are special elections quite different from general elections, but this was just one race (and involved a poor Democratic campaign) so it is not a given Mass. will continue to trend GOP.

[nclib]

cinyc,

I misread your chart. The second to last column looked like swing/trend since the difference between the two was similar to the projected swings discussed yesterday as a parameter for a Brown victory. MA-8 having the lowest swing and MA-3 having the highest makes more sense.

Well, it is probably unlikely that Republicans will win a single house seat this year in MA, unless a vacancy happens to occur, I would agree.  But, consider this.  If a Democrat won a special Senate election in Louisiana 52-47 and carried 4 of 7 districts, I would guess that Democrats might get a tad excited about their prospects for the fall elections.

Perhaps, but keep in mind that Louisiana has a history of electing Democratic Senators--in fact every election the past 100 years except Vitter in 2004.

Has anyone ever calculated the Obama% for the Boston parts of CDs 8 and 9?

According to SwingStateProject:

MA-8: 84.4%
MA-9: 67.6%

[nclib]

Here are Boston's precinct results, so cinyc can finish the CD data for MA-8 and MA-9.