Miles' Election Map Thread

[Miles]

Miles, if you can, it would be interesting seeing those maps for the old (current) CD's which much better reflect communities of interest.

Once I make all the new CDs, I'll fit them together into a state map and them break that map down again into the old CDs

[Miles]

So it had that southern appendage only to keep some Republicans out of the second district?

Well, that was the most efficient way for CD4 to pick up Democratic voters in Fayetteville.

[Miles]

So it had that southern appendage only to keep some Republicans out of the second district?

Well, that was the most efficient way for CD4 to pick up Democratic voters in Fayetteville.

Although they weren't all that Democratic.

But of course they didn't have much leeway trying to shore up the second, retake the 8th and not make the 7th less Republican in the process. There's quite a lot of people in Fayetteville after all.

The 4th's part of Fayetteville is 71% Obama, so that went a long way towards shoring up Ellmers.

One Democratic legislator proposed an amended map putting Cumberland county almost entirely in CD2 and making CD4 much more compact. It would have brought CD2 to 52% McCain, down from 55.7%, while unpacking the 4th.

[Miles]

CD13 was 12% less conservative than the states as whole; Amendment 1 actually fell short of 55%.

The most interesting part of the equation here was Wake county. Despite narrowly voting for McCain (he got 50-51% there, IIRC), the Wake part of the 13th voted 53% Against. The electorate there behaved very similarly to that of the Mecklenburg voters over in CD9.

There seemed to be either low turnout in the rurals, high turnout in Wake, or something of a combination between the two. Wake county cast 70% of the ballots, while, in terms of registered voters, makes up 62% of the district.

The numbers for the rural counties may be slightly off, as there was an rather excessive amount of precinct-splitting with CD1.

[Miles]

Miles, have you posted the gay marriage map for district 1? I looked through the thread and I couldn't find it.  

I actually did CD1 within a few weeks after the election, before I made this thread, so I guess I never got around to posting it.

Despite being heavily Democratic, it voted almost exactly the same as the state as a whole. In fact, outside of Durham, it passed with 67%.



I always thought this district looks like a jellyfish lol

[Miles]

Looking at the statewide CD map, it would interesting to gerrymander a third Against district.

Actually, it probably wouldn't be that hard. You'd probably just have to give the Wake arm of the 4th to the 13th, as the 4th could absorb more For voters; the 13th would then shed some rural counties and should then be an Against district.

[Miles]

Looking at the statewide CD map, it would interesting to gerrymander a third Against district.

Actually, it probably wouldn't be that hard. You'd probably just have to give the Wake arm of the 4th to the 13th, as the 4th could absorb more For voters; the 13th would then shed some rural counties and should then be an Against district.

Actually, a fourth Against district would also be feasible. You could give more Against voters in Charlotte to the 9th while pulling some strongly-For precincts in Union and Iredell out of the district. To keep the 12th Against, it could expand more into Greensboro and W-S.

If the VRA wasn't an issue, Durham could be used to possibly squeeze out a fifth district. But where would you use Durham? Maybe you could target CD2, as Ellmers was against the Amendment anyway.

[Miles]

I noticed that Dare County (where I've been on vacation several times; it's in Jones's district) voted for McCain but against Amendment 1. Any reason for this?

Well, during the debate on Amendment 1, the Democrats argued that it would hurt tourism in the state; I guess that argument sold well in Dare county.

[Miles]

The old 13th was very close; it failed in Raliegh and Greensboro, but that wasn't enough to offset its landslide margins elsewhere:

[Miles]

Well, both Roberts and Pittenger are well known in the district. Roberts has been on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners for 8 years and Pittenger represented southern Charlotte in the State Senate.

That said, Myrick always overperformed the Republican bend of this district, and I don't think all of her unique strength will carry over to Pittenger. Also, I think Roberts was as good a Democrat as we could have run here.

Hagan came within 4 points of Dole there in 2008, losing 50-46; for now, I see that as more or less Roberts' ceiling. The district is obviously trending Democrat, so maybe when Pittenger retires (or makes a gaffe) the Democrats could pick this up down the line.

The poll has Roberts winning the Mecklenburg part of the district by 11, which I'm not sure I buy. Obama lost the Mecklenburg portion by a few tenths of a percentage point; Pittenger beat Dalton there by 12 points in 2008. Pittenger also got 68% in the Union part and 65% in Iredell in 2008, so I think its reasonable that he'll at least duplicate those margins this year.

Looking at the composition of the district, 71% of the vote comes from Mecklenburg, 14% from Union and 15% from Iredell.

If Pittenger matches his 2008 margins in Union and Iredell, and Roberts actually wins Mecklenburg by 10 points, Pittenger still wins 50-49.

[Miles]

According to DRA, the Republican average of the Mecklenburg chunk of NC-09 is 57%, though it was only 50% McCain. Pretty tough sledding. Don't forget that Pittenger had no problem slapping down $2 million of his own wealth to win the nomination.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see Roberts win (I'll be voting for her), but I'm skeptical that this will end up being close.

[Miles]

If there are any other insomniacs creative souls like myself who want to make precinct maps for NC, I hope this will help. I've uploaded my basic shape templates for each CD as well as a map of the entire state (where I've integrated the split precincts).

Just follow the links here, copy the maps into Paint/Paint.Net and you're good to start coloring.

This are for my standard-scale maps, though I'll have an even larger version coming down the pipe.


CD1
CD2
CD3
CD4
CD5
CD6
CD7
CD8
CD9
CD10
CD11
CD12
CD13


The individual districts should all be consistent with this statewide map (colors based on the standard DRA scheme):

[Miles]

Southeastern NC is one of my personal favorite places, electorally speaking; its an area where conservaDems, like Kissell and McIntyre do very well. So, I always watch results there especially closely.

Here's Senate District 13, consisting of Robeson and Columbus counties. Despite the new VRA Senate districts and vote-packing by the Republicans, this is still the most heavily Democratic Senate district; less than 13% of voters in this district are registered Republicans.

I'm pretty sure that this was also the most pro-Amendment 1 district. Between the Robeson and Columbus counties, it passed with 85.8%.

I thought the visual contrast between Amendment 1's 72-point win and the registration gap (72-13 Democratic) would be interesting.

[Miles]

It actually passed with less than 60% in CD6!



This supports my observation of higher turnout in the more educated areas. Between Guilford, Orange and Durham Counties, it narrowly failed 50.4-40.6. Likewise, those three counties collectively make up about 46% of the district but they cast 54.6% of the ballots.

[Miles]

[Miles]

With all 13 CDs!

[Miles]

I've done the entire statewide precinct map, but does anyone know a website I can use to upload a 6600 X 2830 pixel image?

[Miles]

'And here we go:



Link.

[Miles]

[Miles]

As usual, thanks to everyone for their input!

I've gotten a request to sort out the Amendment 1 results by the old CDs, so I'll be rolling those out as my next batch of maps (in addition to some other miscellaneous projects I'm working on!).

[Miles]

This was the clown car highly-competitive Republican primary to replace Bart Gordon. I think this is a pretty neat map. 'Good thing for Black that Rutherford County was excised from the new district.

[Miles]

Since the old iteration of the 11th included the entirety of Bumcombe county, it was considerably more Against than the Republican version. Comparing the districts, it dropped from 71% For, under the new map, to 63% under the old lines, still a few points more conservative than the state.

[Miles]

Amendment 1 passed in the old 9th by a noticeably larger margin than it did in the new 9th; it passed by 14% in the former versus 6% in the latter. These are the purely geographic reasons that I can think of to account for the difference:

-The old 9th was less Mecklenburg-centric. 60% of its population came from Mecklenburg but it when it was redrawn, that number was up to 70%.

-The new 9th contains less of Union county. Likewise, the Union precicnts that the new 9th retained were collectively less For (69%) than the old 9th's chunk of Union (73%).

-The new 9th traded out 75.5% For Gaston precincts in favor of slightly more liberal Iredell precincts, 73.3%.

[Miles]

Any comments about the others--perhaps a fluke in some cases...

Something that I noticed was the county discrepancy in Rocky Mount. It passed by relatively lukewarm margins in the Edgecombe half of the city but passed in a landslide in the Nash precincts.

[Miles]

Well, since the old and new CD2 only share 29% of precincts, not much use in comparing them. Though, while the new CD2 is slightly more conservative than the state, Amendment passed by a heftier 2:1 in the old version.