Strongest swings, by county

[jimrtex]

Speaking of wierd: unless these are incomplete data, turnout fell by quite a bit in a fair number of West Texas counties.

Which area?  They had snow in the Panhandle on election day.

[jimrtex]

Which area?  They had snow in the Panhandle on election day.

Loving (yeah, smallest county in the nation). Culberson. Brewster IIRC. One or two more that I forgot, presumably more where I just didn't notice. So, more like Big Bend country than Panhandle.

That would be the Trans-Pecos (except for Loving County which would be Permian Basin.

The 2000 election in Loving County was weird.  The 2000 census had a population of 67, while the turnout in the election was 156.  I have read an article that local elections are fiercely contested in the county.  There may have been high "absentee" voting in 2000 that maybe drew some attention.

Votes cast and registered voters for the biennial elections (President or Governor): 1992: 96/116; 1994: 99/125; 1996: 77/132; 1998: 108/158;  2000: 156/211; 2002: 63/152; 2004 primaries: 52/95; 2004: 81/108.  It looks like they cleaned up their voter rolls.

Census estimates for Culberson County show a pretty sharp drop in population (10% since 2000) after holding fairly steady for 30 years.  This might be due to some oil and gas going out of production, or maybe a gypsum processing plant or similar.  The only other industry is services for Interstate I-10.  Van Horn is the largest town for about 100 miles either way.

Brewster County shows an increase in turnout (which matches a steady population growth).  Sul Ross University is in Alpine, which is in a more mountainous area which makes the weather more tolerable.

[jimrtex]

Mountain
Top 5 Dem swings
Boulder CO 26.3*

The Boulder result is flawed on two counts. a) Broomfield County was created out of parts of three counties including Boulder, and voted well more Republican than Boulder. (It's missing on Dave's county map, btw.) Boulder result 2000 is including parts of Broomfield. b) The number of votes cast is well down, even when taking Broomfield into effect. Alcon found some newer Boulder data elsewhere (I haven't been able to find data at the Secretary of State's website myself) which would show the swing to be some ~6 points less.

Parts of 4 counties (Boulder, Adams, Jefferson, and Weld).

The Boulder part was about 22/291 (7.5%) of the 2000 Boulder county population.  The Adams part was 16/363 of the Adams county population.  The Jefferson part was 2/527 of the Jefferson county population. 

If I were going to adjust the figures 2000 figures, I would assume a Broomfield result similar to 2004 (based on Jefferson County 2000 to 2004, and then take about 1/2 from Boulder and 1/2 from Adams).   So say take 6,000 from Bush-2000, 5,000 from Gore-2000, and say 500 from Nader-2000.  This would give an adjusted Boulder result for 2000 of Gore 64.9k, Bush 45.8k, Nader 16.0k, or Gore 51.2%, Bush 36.1%, and Nader 12.7%.  So overall about 1% more Democrat with Broomfield excluded (2% if you include Nader).

The Boulder County clerk shows about 157,000 votes with a 66.3% to 32.4% margin victory.  They apparently had problems scanning their ballots.  The above does not include provisionals which are expected to be posted on the 16th.  Provisionals might be kind of high because there was a Secretary of State ruling - I think it had something to do with dumped registrations, so you could claim that you had registered and the fact that the the University of Colorado is in Boulder, which results in a high voter turnover.

[jimrtex]

Culberson was in the news over here for a population increase actually...some German artist colony. These guys bought up the ghost town site of Lobo, due south of Van Horn.
I don't think it had been a ghost town for long though. (Plus of course, Germans can't vote in America.)

Lobo, TX - Handbook of Texas

There are also apparently a petroglyph site in the area, from an earlier artist colonly.  By the way, until the early 20th century, permanent resident aliens could vote in Texas, many of whom were German.

On a road map, it appears that there was a bit of agricultural development in the area which occured in the mid-20th century.  Culberson County was the last county to produce a bale of cotton.  It kind of sounds like it is more abandoned buildings than anything particularly ghostly, unless the railroad station still exists.  US 90 is the traditional route from San Antonio and Houston to El Paso and the west coast, following the Southern Pacific RR, and avoiding the Hill Country.  A lot of I-10 west of San Antonio was a totally new road through the Hill Country.

Map of Culberson County - Lobo is near the southern tip on the highway.

[jimrtex]

Anyone else noticed something odd about the Raleigh, WV (Beckley) results?

President Bush campaigned at the Raleigh County Armory in July.