Greetings from the western Corn Belt! Thought I would share some analysis I did of the 2008 election in Lincoln.
I broke down the vote in my hometown into different neighborhoods: Suburban, Capitol, Core, Country Club, Working class, Absentee. I did this because I think it is interesting how certain neighborhoods tend to be more right or left tilting. I find the difference between some of the precincts in the "core" neighborhoods and some of the precincts in the "suburban" neighborhoods to be particularly fascinating simply because the demographics (on paper anyway) are very similar. Anyway, here are the results and keep in mind that there is a relatively significant rural vote in Lancaster County so that pushed the county more toward the right (Obama won 51.5-46.5 in Lancaster County):
Region of Lincoln Total Vote: McCain Obama Nader
Suburban 33146 54.4 43.4 < 1.0
Capitol 463 19.8 74.7 1.1
Core 14002 33.4 63.2 1.0
Country club 1926 38.0 60.1 < 1.0
Working class 37428 44.5 52.5 < 1.0
Absentee 27000 40.7 57.4 < 1.0
The neighborhood break down is as follows:
Suburban- Lincoln doesn't have an actual suburb but various parts of the city have more of a post 1980, suburban feel to it: non-gridded streets, mostly white and middle class people with some upper middle class too. In most ways, this part of town looks like a stereotypical Midwestern suburban area and the voting here reflects this.
Capitol: This only comprises one precinct but this is the neighborhood that surrounds the capitol. The neighborhood is pretty diverse racially (although is still probably at least 55% white) and is relatively poor, but is not a true ghetto by any means. Many UNL students live here as do many international refugees. Overall, this neighborhood has a pretty liberal feel to it.
Core: These are the original neighborhoods of Lincoln. These neighborhoods are relatively mixed racially (by relative it is probably 80% white and 20% of a variety of other races) and have a mix of high income, middle class, and low income voters. No joke, there are places where $800K homes are 2 blocks from apartments that house every creed and color. Overall though, I would describe this part of town as a left-tilting, well educated, middle class area.
Country Club: This only comprises 4 precincts, but I made it separate since this is an area that stands out from the other older neighborhoods in town. In general, this is an area with affluent people and many older, stately homes worth over 500K (which in Lincoln is quite expensive). I'm not really sure what occupation these folks have (UNL doesn't pay THAT well) but this area definitely has a distinct guilty rich liberal feel to it.
Working class: This is the part of town built mostly between World War 2 and about 1980. These are generally very middle class neighborhoods and have some of the same stereotypes that go along with it (working man values fiscally, more conservative values socially). In general, most people are somewhat educated (but not necessarily college) and there is some diversity, but generally speaking is pretty white in ethnicity. So, really these are your "All-american" neighborhoods and the vote here is generally very close to the national vote.
Interesting... I have passed through Lincoln several times and always found it an interesting town, with a really cool coffee shop in the old downtown grain-trading district and some awesome used bookstores further outside of town.
Aside from personal anecdotes, since you have already gained access to the precinct returns if you can post a Shapefile copy of the precinct map on the following thread, Alcon might be able to get you a cool map that we can all enjoy as well .
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=88701.0Welcome to forum!!!!
