Miles' Election Map Thread

[Miles]

I might do a 2000 Democratic gerrymander with such a Wake district and see how it comes out.

Yeah, Etheridge's seat would probably revert back to the way it was from 1992-1996, which was pretty Republicans and getting more so with the growth of Johnston county.  Also, the 4th would have dropped the Republican leaning parts of the county and raised the Demo percentage further there. 

I drew a map for this over here.

[Miles]

As props to Blanco for calling out Jindal this past week, I've decided to do the 2003 Governor map next.

I've broken down how the CDs would have voted:



Whats funny in this map is that (other than CD2) districts 4 and 6 were the most Democratic at the federal level; Blanco's performance in both 4 and 6 was actually worse than her state margin.

[smoltchanov]

As props to Blanco for calling out Jindal this past week, I've decided to do the 2003 Governor map next.

I've broken down how the CDs would have voted:



Whats funny in this map is that (other than CD2) districts 4 and 6 were the most Democratic at the federal level; Blanco's performance in both 4 and 6 was actually worse than her state margin.

If i remember correctly - Blanco ran that year as a rather "old school" Cajun Democrat (and rather conservative one), while Jindal - as a sort of "urban conservative reformer". In addition - Democratic ad, showing Jindal even mre dark-skinned that he really is, worked fairly well in rural Louisiana - Blanco won many conservative rural parishes, which Democrats seldom win.

[Miles]

If i remember correctly - Blanco ran that year as a rather "old school" Cajun Democrat (and rather conservative one), while Jindal - as a sort of "urban conservative reformer". In addition - Democratic ad, showing Jindal even mre dark-skinned that he really is, worked fairly well in rural Louisiana - Blanco won many conservative rural parishes, which Democrats seldom win.

Exactly. One of Jindal's slogans (which he repeated alot later when Obama was running in 2008), was that in Louisiana, the Republicans are the party of change. Jindal even got Ray Nagin's endorsement.

Out of Obama's 5 worst parishes in 2012 (Cameron, LaSalle, Livingston, Grant and West Carroll) Blanco carried all of them except Livingston pretty comfortably.

[minionofmidas]

If i remember correctly - Blanco ran that year as a rather "old school" Cajun Democrat (and rather conservative one), while Jindal - as a sort of "urban conservative reformer". In addition - Democratic ad, showing Jindal even mre dark-skinned that he really is, worked fairly well in rural Louisiana - Blanco won many conservative rural parishes, which Democrats seldom win.

Exactly. One of Jindal's slogans (which he repeated alot later when Obama was running in 2008), was that in Louisiana, the Republicans are the party of change. Jindal even got Ray Nagin's endorsement.

And Kathleen Blanco enacted her revenge for that when Katrina hit.

That was truly a gun-to-your-head, escape-to-Nunavut election. Rare to have those be actually competitive.

[Miles]

Well ya'll, I have to make a few minor changes, like Olreans Parish, but this is basically it!



FULL SIZE.

[smoltchanov]

It seems to me that substantial number of black-majority precincts along the river still somehow managed to vote Romney . How is it possible? Or am i wrong?

[smoltchanov]

If i remember correctly - Blanco ran that year as a rather "old school" Cajun Democrat (and rather conservative one), while Jindal - as a sort of "urban conservative reformer". In addition - Democratic ad, showing Jindal even mre dark-skinned that he really is, worked fairly well in rural Louisiana - Blanco won many conservative rural parishes, which Democrats seldom win.

Exactly. One of Jindal's slogans (which he repeated alot later when Obama was running in 2008), was that in Louisiana, the Republicans are the party of change. Jindal even got Ray Nagin's endorsement.

Out of Obama's 5 worst parishes in 2012 (Cameron, LaSalle, Livingston, Grant and West Carroll) Blanco carried all of them except Livingston pretty comfortably.

Again, if i am correct - there is a big difference between Livingston and other four. Livingston is a suburban and rather upscale parish, full of rather well-to-do managerial types, who doesn't have a "nobless oblige" symptoms  (and sympathy to less successful people then they are) of their coastal counterparts (being, frequently, well-to-do only in first generation), while other four are relatively sparsely populated rural parishes. It's difficult to imagine to me - which sort of Democrat can win any of these parishes (only - extremely conservative (BTW - if you know such people - inform me, you know - i like the mavericks)), with Obama getting between 11% and 19% there. Of course - compared to local candidates Obama underperformed severely in these parishes, but still - ....

[minionofmidas]

If i remember correctly - Blanco ran that year as a rather "old school" Cajun Democrat (and rather conservative one), while Jindal - as a sort of "urban conservative reformer". In addition - Democratic ad, showing Jindal even mre dark-skinned that he really is, worked fairly well in rural Louisiana - Blanco won many conservative rural parishes, which Democrats seldom win.

Exactly. One of Jindal's slogans (which he repeated alot later when Obama was running in 2008), was that in Louisiana, the Republicans are the party of change. Jindal even got Ray Nagin's endorsement.

Out of Obama's 5 worst parishes in 2012 (Cameron, LaSalle, Livingston, Grant and West Carroll) Blanco carried all of them except Livingston pretty comfortably.

Again, if i am correct - there is a big difference between Livingston and other four. Livingston is a suburban and rather upscale parish, full of rather well-to-do managerial types, who doesn't have a "nobless oblige" symptoms  (and sympathy to less successful people then they are) of their coastal counterparts (being, frequently, well-to-do only in first generation)

Suburban - exurban, with a population almost doubled over the past twenty years. But not exactly upscale. Richer than the places we're comparing it with here, richer than the state as a whole, but a lot poorer than Saint Tammany. And incredibly White by Southern standards and fairly uniform - unusually small difference between mean and median income (mean income is not that far above the state average actually), with the highest income brackets (200k+ households) underrepresented compared to the state as a whole.

[smoltchanov]

If i remember correctly - Blanco ran that year as a rather "old school" Cajun Democrat (and rather conservative one), while Jindal - as a sort of "urban conservative reformer". In addition - Democratic ad, showing Jindal even mre dark-skinned that he really is, worked fairly well in rural Louisiana - Blanco won many conservative rural parishes, which Democrats seldom win.

Exactly. One of Jindal's slogans (which he repeated alot later when Obama was running in 2008), was that in Louisiana, the Republicans are the party of change. Jindal even got Ray Nagin's endorsement.

Out of Obama's 5 worst parishes in 2012 (Cameron, LaSalle, Livingston, Grant and West Carroll) Blanco carried all of them except Livingston pretty comfortably.

Again, if i am correct - there is a big difference between Livingston and other four. Livingston is a suburban and rather upscale parish, full of rather well-to-do managerial types, who doesn't have a "nobless oblige" symptoms  (and sympathy to less successful people then they are) of their coastal counterparts (being, frequently, well-to-do only in first generation)

Suburban - exurban, with a population almost doubled over the past twenty years. But not exactly upscale. Richer than the places we're comparing it with here, richer than the state as a whole, but a lot poorer than Saint Tammany. And incredibly White by Southern standards and fairly uniform - unusually small difference between mean and median income (mean income is not that far above the state average actually), with the highest income brackets (200k+ households) underrepresented compared to the state as a whole.

Thanks for correction! Neverthelless - such areas usually vote rather in uniform way: in this case heavily Republican.. Probably - less so because of race then rural parishes, but more so - because of general economic and social positions..

[Miles]

2012 President vs. Governor in Mecklenburg County.

Its pretty obvious which is which:

[Miles]

Yikes....

My personal views aside, Dalton was a good candidate and had a much better resume than this result would indicate.



FULL SIZE.

[JacobNC]

Eeeek.  Patty Mac even won inside I-277.

It looks like the very few Romney-Dalton precincts are in Rutherford County.  I don't think Obama won any precincts in Rutherford County, but Dalton won a few around Rutherfordton and Forest City.

[Miles]

McCrory vs. Romney in Mecklenburg County

[Miles]

While I'm on this topic, here are a few more maps.

I broke McCrory/Romney in Mecklenburg & Wake counties down by CD.




I used different color scales for the counties, so the maps aren't exactly consistent. The reason for this was that McCrory's range of overperformance was much wider in Mecklenburg, as you'd expect. There, he ran anywhere between 6 and 41 points ahead of his Presidential ticket. In Wake, he range was much more limited, ranging from 4 to 16 points.

'Looking at Mecklenburg first. The voters that were least willing to split their ballots were the Democrats in the CD12 portion of the county. Notice the contrast among the precincts in the inner border between CDs 9 and 12.
In the CD9 section of Mecklenburg, McCrory performed 27 points better than Romney, winning 65-33 as opposed to 52/47.
McCrory lost the CD12 precincts 74/24, but still 17 points better than Romney's 83-16 loss.
Finally, only three precincts from CD8 were still left in the county, which McCrory fared 19 points better than Romney (losing them 59/40 as opposed to 69/31).

For Wake county, the apex of McCrory's overperformance was, well, around Apex, Cary and along the western edge of the county. As such, McCrory ran the furthest ahead in the CD2 part of the county. Those precincts actually voted 52/47 for Obama but 53/44 for McCrory.
The consistency between CD4 and CD12 was pretty interesting. In both those areas, McCrory outpaced Romney by about 11 points.

[Miles]

On the other side of the spectrum, I wanted to find an area where Romney ran ahead of McCrory. The first place that came to mind was NC Senate District 13, consisting of Robeson and Columbus counties (I had a shapefile of this on hand, so it worked out well). State Democrats here always outperform the Presidential ticket.

[JacobNC]

Because I was bored I decided to map out the results of the 2012 Attorney General election in NC.  Roy Cooper won every county... or did he?  Comparing his actual vote totals to the total number of votes cast in the Secretary of State election (similar downballot status), you can see which counties had high percentages, and in some cases, majorities of voters not voting.  Unfortunately I'm not Paint-savvy so I only have one shade of red and blue on this map.



"Not Voting" Counties:

60% Avery
57% Mitchell
56% Randolph
56% Clay
55% Carteret
53% Lincoln
52% Stokes
52% Alexander
51% Yadkin
51% Wilkes
50% Moore

Ironically, Cooper won Moore County in 2008.

Cooper best counties (over 80%):

84% Warren
83% Durham
82% Halifax
82% Northampton
81% Hertford
81% Edgecombe
81% Robeson
80% Anson

Biggest improvements over Obama:

63% Allegheny (+32%)
60% Surry (+29%)
75% Tyrrell (+28%)
73% Columbus (+27%)
60% Rutherford (+27%)

And in case you were curious:

50% Currituck
51% Cherokee
52% Union
54% Gaston
56% Davidson
60% Brunswick
64% New Hanover
66% Alamance
66% Buncombe
68% Forsyth
70% Wake
71% Guilford
71% Mecklenburg
71% Nash
79% Orange

If you didn't support Cooper, it was very easy to simply abstain, skip, or "not vote" however Cooper probably did get many votes because he was the only name on the ballot.  If he had an actual Republican opponent, my guess is he would have gotten around 56-57% of the vote.

[Miles]

Good idea.

I did the shades for Cooper's vote vs. the number of President votes cast, but I can do SoS as well.



DATA.

Cooper would have fallen below 50% in 16 counties:

Caldwell   49.92%
Macon   49.69%
Cherokee   48.03%
Moore   47.97%
Currituck   47.60%
Wilkes   46.91%
Yadkin   46.79%
Alexander   46.73%
Stokes   46.65%
Graham   46.24%
Lincoln   45.55%
Carteret   43.95%
Clay   42.50%
Randolph   42.23%
Mitchell   38.97%
Avery   36.49%

After those, he was under 51% in three other counties:

Davie   50.97%
Henderson   50.72%
Union   50.58%

As I was filling out the map, I fully expected him to fall under 50% in Union, but that would have been the next one to flip.

[Miles]

Cooper vs. the total SoS votes.

'The same map/calculations that you did, psychicpanda, but with the shading intervals.

[JacobNC]

Nice.  Yes, it's shocking that anybody with (DEM) next to their name was able to win over a majority of Union County voters, no matter the circumstances.

[minionofmidas]

No One could be worse than a Democrat - any Democrat - huh?

[minionofmidas]

I have a request!

Swing map by precinct of coastal Louisiana (South of the mississippi - ie St Bernard to Cameron. Actually, to St Mary would probably be quite enough.)

[Miles]

I have a request!

Swing map by precinct of coastal Louisiana (South of the mississippi - ie St Bernard to Cameron. Actually, to St Mary would probably be quite enough.)

Ok. I'll start with that next!

[Miles]

Here's an interesting bit of history. I was digging around in archives and this is the original map in 1991 that the Democrats were pushing for before they had to draw CD12 in its current serpentine iteration.



The new 12th district, gained after the 1990 census, was originally set to be a Republican sink the upper Piedmont.

It looks like they were trying to salvage their hold on CD5 even as that area was trending away from them. It keeps all of Forsyth and Watauga and reaches down into the Piedmont to grab a few Democratic towns.

CD9 would have been most all of Meckleburg and Lincoln counties. Today, this would probably be Lean D, but back then Mecklenburg was swingy. Even as late as 2002, it voted for Liddy Dole and Bush even cleared 50% there in 2000. This CD9 still would have been at least Lean R throughout the 1990's with Myrick.

CD6 contained all of Guilford county, which would seem good for Democrats today, but like Mecklenburg, Guilford was swingy at the federal level up until recently. Coble was (is) quite popular and well entrenched, so I think he would have held this seat throughout the 1990's as well.

The only seats that would have certainly elected Democrats throughout the decade (excluding 1994) would be 1, 2, 4 and 7.

CD3 would have fallen permanently with Jones in 1994 and in 1998, Robin Hayes would have still still flipped CD8 when Bill Hefner retired.

I guess, in retrospect, it actually helped Democrats that CD12 was ultimately drawn the way it was because it gave them at least one seat in the western part of the state.

Despite the ugliness of this map, only 9 actual precincts were split.

[Mr.Phips]

Here's an interesting bit of history. I was digging around in archives and this is the original map in 1991 that the Democrats were pushing for before they had to draw CD12 in its current serpentine iteration.



The new 12th district, gained after the 1990 census, was originally set to be a Republican sink the upper Piedmont.

It looks like they were trying to salvage their hold on CD5 even as that area was trending away from them. It keeps all of Forsyth and Watauga and reaches down into the Piedmont to grab a few Democratic towns.

CD9 would have been most all of Meckleburg and Lincoln counties. Today, this would probably be Lean D, but back then Mecklenburg was swingy. Even as late as 2002, it voted for Liddy Dole and Bush even cleared 50% there in 2000. This CD9 still would have been at least Lean R throughout the 1990's with Myrick.

CD6 contained all of Guilford county, which would seem good for Democrats today, but like Mecklenburg, Guilford was swingy at the federal level up until recently. Coble was (is) quite popular and well entrenched, so I think he would have held this seat throughout the 1990's as well.

The only seats that would have certainly elected Democrats throughout the decade (excluding 1994) would be 1, 2, 4 and 7.

CD3 would have fallen permanently with Jones in 1994 and in 1998, Robin Hayes would have still still flipped CD8 when Bill Hefner retired.

I guess, in retrospect, it actually helped Democrats that CD12 was ultimately drawn the way it was because it gave them at least one seat in the western part of the state.

Despite the ugliness of this map, only 9 actual precincts were split.

Can you figure 1988 and 1992 Presidential results for these districts?