2016 White and Non-White Vote by County Project

[reagente]

[deleted]

[Adam Griffin]

Probably, but I'm not sure when I'll begin. I spent more time on this one than I care to admit.

[snip]

Very cool! I think links are able to be posted at either 12 or 15 posts, for the record. You can also just put a space in the URL to get around that.

One question regarding the trend you also saw; white voters being more Democratic in heavily minority counties. Did you observe this trend/limit it to rural counties as well? It all but makes sense for this to occur in urban areas given what we know about white urban voters, but I observed this as well in many Deep South rural counties. I did some very basic regression analysis (I'm not nearly as statistics-savvy as some think) with Georgia's counties and there did appear to be a trend.

What initially caught my eye was Georgia: since the Secretary of State publishes both voter registration and voter turnout by race for each county/precinct, I was able to definitively see a trend in select counties where the white/black combined electorate exceeded 95%. The broader trend also appeared throughout the Black Belt to some degree, but I did not have such explicitly accurate data to work with elsewhere.

There weren't many other opportunities outside of the South (other than the Southwest, and again, the Latino issue was a huge one that consistently messed with my numbers beyond the point of confidence; ditto for Native American counties) to really look at it and see if it was broadly associated with larger non-white populations or just black populations.


As far as converting your data into a map how I did: there are a few tutorials on the web for doing such with Fusion Tables, but the gist of it is:

You'll need to first upload a shapefile (can be in CSV or KML format) containing all of the geography/data points for each county to be mapped. You can do this by going to Google Drive, then clicking "New", going to "More" and then selecting "Google Fusion Table". You should be able to download the exact shapefile I used from here. If that for some reason doesn't work, though, then there are plenty of county map shapefiles available; you may have to convert others to KML or CSV for it to work with Fusion Tables, though.

Then, create a CSV spreadsheet with FIPS county codes (as well as the county names ideally in a separate column for easy reference). The FIPS codes you'll need to use are the five digit ones, with state (first 2 digits) and county (last 3 digits) FIPS codes merged together (01001 = Autauga, AL; 06107 = Tulare, CA; 42133 = York, PA; etc). In each county's row, input your data. Save the spreadsheet and upload the 'table' to Fusion Tables. It's worth noting that Fusion Tables does not like explicit percentages and may not work with them; this is why all of my results are formatted in decimals (i.e. "56% = 0.56"), so you'll want to do the same.

With your CSV spreadsheet open, go to "File - Merge", and select your shapefile map as the file to merge with your CSV sheet. You'll need to match the columns from each sheet via the menu there; in my shapefile map linked above, the correct column is entitled "name". For your CSV sheet, it'll be the name of the column that has your FIPS codes in it (BTW: you need to specify a name for each column in your CSV sheet in its first row).

If all has worked according to plan, then your data should be merged successfully. From there, you'll go to the "geometry" tab at the top, click on "change feature styles" and navigate to the "fill color" option under 'polygons'. You can use a gradient (like what I did in my first map) or a series of buckets (what I used to show the straightforward blue, purple and red in the second map) by configuring the exact numerical cut-offs or ranges for each, and telling it which column (the one with your results) to use.

[The_Doctor]

This is amazing. I'd be willing to help with data lookup for a white voters for Clinton type deal. This kind of stuff is my kryptonite and I hope you definitely continue for Clinton.

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ That's very cool! You should really make your own thread here with the map since it's a separate project. That way, it'll get the attention it deserves.

[muon2]

Once you get to 20 posts your links will be active. If you'd like to have me split the posts out into their own thread, let me know. In the meantime, here's the map from reagente:

[Antonio the Sixth]

...wow.

[heatcharger]

Whites in the Midwest left the Democrats like never before. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to believe they'll ever come back to Obama 2012 levels anytime soon.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Whites in the Midwest left the Democrats like never before. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to believe they'll ever come back to Obama 2012 levels anytime soon.

Your logic is mind-boggling. "Well, these people were Democrats until yesterday but since they didn't vote for Hillary (who utterly ignored them in order to court muh moderate suburban voters), clearly now they're lost forever!!!"

[RFayette]

The Iron Range (and Vermont) really seem like outliers now.

[heatcharger]

Whites in the Midwest left the Democrats like never before. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to believe they'll ever come back to Obama 2012 levels anytime soon.

Your logic is mind-boggling. "Well, these people were Democrats until yesterday but since they didn't vote for Hillary (who utterly ignored them in order to court muh moderate suburban voters), clearly now they're lost forever!!!"

I'm looking at more than just the presidential vote. In 2014, Iowa voted for Joni f***ing Ernst, which should've been the first sign the state was moving hard away from Democrats. In 2016 in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson beat progressive stalwart Russ Feingold by a greater margin than Trump did. Further down ballot, Minnesota's congressional Democrats barely held on, and Republicans took control of both the MN and IA State House.

I'm not sure why it's so ridiculous to believe that the Midwest is trending hard R, and Trump just happened to catalyze that process.

[RINO Tom]

Interesting tidbit ... Orange County Whites remained Republican.  Shows the demographic change.

[Bismarck]

Interesting tidbit ... Orange County Whites remained Republican.  Shows the demographic change.

Non Swing voter will sure be upset.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Whites in the Midwest left the Democrats like never before. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to believe they'll ever come back to Obama 2012 levels anytime soon.

Your logic is mind-boggling. "Well, these people were Democrats until yesterday but since they didn't vote for Hillary (who utterly ignored them in order to court muh moderate suburban voters), clearly now they're lost forever!!!"

I'm looking at more than just the presidential vote. In 2014, Iowa voted for Joni f***ing Ernst, which should've been the first sign the state was moving hard away from Democrats. In 2016 in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson beat progressive stalwart Russ Feingold by a greater margin than Trump did. Further down ballot, Minnesota's congressional Democrats barely held on, and Republicans took control of both the MN and IA State House.

I'm not sure why it's so ridiculous to believe that the Midwest is trending hard R, and Trump just happened to catalyze that process.

Midterms are Midterms, and barely a third of the electorate even showed up to vote in 2014. In 2016 it's obvious that Presidential coattails dominated all downballot votes (literally every State voted the same on Senate elections as their Preisdential vote). You don't pronounce the death of Democrats in the Midwest over two atypical election cycles.

But of course, if Democrats accept your logic and decide that the Midwest in lost to them, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Bismarck]

Lake and Marion in Indiana really surprise me, I think In 2012 Obama won whites in both those counties.

[Beet]

Are you this person?

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[Mike88]

Wow!!! Fantastic job reagente!! Congrats!

The map is amazing. The white electorate in Detroit, Indianapolis and Atlanta voted for Trump. That result surprised me because i believed that the white vote in these areas was extremally liberal. Is there any reason for this? Is the AA vote so high in these counties that overshades the white vote?

PS: Just off topic, reagente are you portuguese?

[White Trash]

That attempt to court suburbanites and college educated white folks really didn't pay off.

[RINO Tom]

That attempt to court suburbanites and college educated white folks really didn't pay off.

LOL, seriously.  It worked in a few places (suburbs of Chicago, NOVA, CT), but holy cow did it provide zero electoral gain.

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

Wow!!! Fantastic job reagente!! Congrats!

The map is amazing. The white electorate in Detroit, Indianapolis and Atlanta voted for Trump. That result surprised me because i believed that the white vote in these areas was extremally liberal. Is there any reason for this? Is the AA vote so high in these counties that overshades the white vote?

PS: Just off topic, reagente are you portuguese?

-Wayne County is 41% Black (though its White vote was pretty Democratic before the Age of Trump), Marion is 27% Black, and virtually nowhere in Georgia is "extremely liberal".

[heatcharger]

Midterms are Midterms, and barely a third of the electorate even showed up to vote in 2014. In 2016 it's obvious that Presidential coattails dominated all downballot votes (literally every State voted the same on Senate elections as their Presidential vote). You don't pronounce the death of Democrats in the Midwest over two atypical election cycles.

But of course, if Democrats accept your logic and decide that the Midwest in lost to them, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Did I say to abandon them altogether? No. I still want Democrats to fight hard to make sure Tammy Baldwin gets reelected and to throw out Emperor Walker, but if Russ Feingold can't win let alone outperform Hillary, the state is clearly becoming unfriendly territory for Democrats. You can blame job outsourcing, automation, or Walker for destroying unions, but all of these factors are quite difficult to reverse.

Michigan and Pennsylvania can be won back somewhat easier, but it won't be with the exact same coalition that Obama or any previous Democrat was able to put together.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Michigan and Pennsylvania can be won back somewhat easier, but it won't be with the exact same coalition that Obama or any previous Democrat was able to put together.

But see, that's the whole issue. Becoming the party of urban centers and suburbs is not a viable strategy for the Democrats. Even if they can somehow muster an electoral majority with these coalitions, they will still be permanently locked out of the House (even with fair redistricting) and probably the Senate too. It will also lead to a voter base that's unwilling to support any serious redistributive policy, thus turning the Democratic party into the party of affluent, "cosmopolitan" managerial centrists who don't give a crap about poverty and inequality. That party would not even be worth supporting.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

That attempt to court suburbanites and college educated white folks really didn't pay off.

LOL, seriously.  It worked in a few places (suburbs of Chicago, NOVA, CT), but holy cow did it provide zero electoral gain.

eh, honestly, I thought it would work in 3 places even without making an attempt at improvements - the northern west coast, Chicago, and NoVa - and Chicago looks downright pathetic on this map. I expected a lot more red in that area with an enormous effort in both campaign and wasted time registering voters who didn't matter, specifically there.

[RINO Tom]

RE: Indianapolis, from my limited time there (visit my sister several times per year), it very much seems like a Republican community.  Bible Belty?  No, not like the rural areas of the state ... but the Whites I've met there seem to be about a 70/30 Republican split.  Given that I am probably interacting with a disproportionate number of affluent residents who attended a private school, I realize that percentage is too high, but I would have guessed a 55/45 split among Indianapolis Whites in favor of the GOP, for sure.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Interesting tidbit ... Orange County Whites remained Republican.  Shows the demographic change.

Just compared it to the 2012 white vote percentage, looks like Orange County Whites swung somewhere between 10-20% points towards the Democrats.

[NOVA Green]

Once you get to 20 posts your links will be active. If you'd like to have me split the posts out into their own thread, let me know. In the meantime, here's the map from reagente:

If you could split out the relevant posts into their own thread, that would be nice.

Thanks reagente!!!

A valuable contribution to the Forum and all of your work is very much appreciated!