King County City/Town Map

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Sweet.  Nice job.

I did the CDP estimates, by the way.  They're not 100% exact, but they are good enough.

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What's the blue bit next to Seattle?

Yarrow Point, Medina, Clyde Hill, and Hunts Point - extremely affluent towns that trended heavily Democratic this year, but not enough to flip them.  Yarrow Point was quite close.  Medina (where Bill Gates lives) will likely be a battle in 2008.  Bush fell from 69% in 2000 to 64% in 2004 in Hunts Point, where the median household income is $180,000.  It only has a few hundred people, though.

By the way, Kerry won something like 50.6-47.2 in areas that aren't in incorporated cities or CDPs.

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What were the results for Seattle?

Kerry won, 80.6%-17.9%.

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Most of the places that voted for Bush in King County fit the average Bush voter, either being rural (Black Diamond, Maple Valley, Enumclaw) or affluent (Sammamish, Medina, Hunts Point). A few of the richer places were Kerry supporters, like Mercer Island, but I'm not very sure exactly why. In my city, Issaquah, a lot of people are Bush supporters, but a lot were Kerry supporters. To most of my friends who were Kerry supporters, the War in Iraq seemed to be the biggest issue, while the people I know who supported Bush cared a lot about the social issues like gay marraige and abortion. Overall the map makes plenty of sense, other than a few odd Kerry places like Skykomish.

Skykomish is deeply weird.  Kerry received over 60 percent there, as well as in the surrounding Stevens precinct, which also includes the town of Baring near the Snohomish County line.  Across the line is the town of Index, where Bush lost almost 3-to-1.  I have no idea why - labour unions, maybe.  They aren't really poor areas.

Kerry probably won even among affluent people in Washington - he was generally victorious in even the richer parts of Bellevue and Redmond, and nearly broke 90% in the ultra-rich areas of Seattle around Broadmoor (although he lost Broadmoor, which is slightly less rich than surrounding areas, itself).

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I like these Washington maps, its good to see sub-county level results for places out west.

Do any of you guys know why Lewis county is so different politically than the rest of Western Washington? Its not the only small county, those ones on Olympic peninsula are heavily Democrat.

Well, Clallam County is Republican.  The reason Jefferson County is so liberal is because of the hippie town of Port Townsend and the surrounding, hippie-infested areas.  Port Townsend voted 3-to-1 for Kerry, despite being demographically identical to any other small town.

Clallam County is Republican because of Forks - which is also the reason Lewis County is Republican.  Agricultural/logging workers are angry about environmentalism in the state, and if they aren't in a union, they vote Republican.  Such is the case in Lewis County, which also has lots of farms (Republican) and socially conservative blue-collar workers in Centralia and Chehalis (also very Republican).

Battle Ground is a great name for a town, its a shame they voted strongly for Bush though.

And is there any chance the large college population in Pullman will flip Whitman county to the Dems? They almost did it in 2004.

Yeah.  This plus Whitman County's rural areas losing population astoundingly fast - 10 of the 11 fastest shrinking incorporated areas in Washington are in Whitman County.  All cities except for Pullman (growing moderately) and one other rural town (the Republican, but not extremely so, Garfield) are losing population at a significant clip.

If I had to guess, Whitman County will be a pure toss-up come 2008.

I'm still awaiting for precinct results for Whitman and one other county (Walla Walla).

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bejkuy,

Thank you for your insight.  Lewis County is, and has always been, the most politically interesting county in WA for me, even if it's nearly the same county-wide.

Here's a quick question for you:  why is Vader Democratic?  If you can answer that, it might shed some light on why the rest of the county isn't.

I've seen maps with surrounding counties (http://216.55.182.132/FairData/WA_Registration/map.asp) and bordering areas are much less Republican in nearly every case - except Paradise on Mt. Rainier, which is heavily Democratic.

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I seem to recall there's some wine growing too?

Is Lewis the only mining county in Western Washington? I know mining counties are usually more Democratic than the counties around them, but the presence of the mines may imply different demographic/migration patterns etc ... just a blind guess though ...

Yeah, there is some wine growing.

Along with the mining and everything comes a much different lifestyle, though.  I think the mines are generally around Morton, which is a more moderate area than the county as a whole.

Mining counties may be more Democratic than other rural, blue-collar-ish counties, but in this case Lewis County is sandwiched between Thurston (Olympia), Pierce (Tacoma), Pacific (service industry, labour unions, and hippies), and Cowlitz (working class Kelso-Longview area with lots of labour unions).  Lewis County, for a rural county with the population that it has, is not exceptionally Republican.

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Does this help?

To be honest...not really.  Looks like silver mining around Morton.  What is the green colour?

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To be honest...not really.  Looks like silver mining around Morton.  What is the green colour?

No; the grey colour is bituminous coal, the light green is subbituminous coal (which generally has lower sulpher emissions, but isn't as good at actually burning. Due to environmental regulations subbituminous coal has had a wonderful decade or so in the U.S). The little red dots indicate coal that can be used for coking.

I got the impression (perhaps incorrect) that coal wasn't the primary thing being mined in Lewis County?  Again, something I know little to nothing about.