NOVA GREEN's Election Analysis Thread

[NOVA Green]

So, started doing a review of some of the demographics of portions of CD-08 to see what if anything that might indicate.

If we look at the preceding information that I posted the other day, the Legislative District 1 portion of CD-08, with generally Democrats only receiving about 30% of the Vote and Republicans generally hitting 65-70%, with the exception of the '16 Sheriff race where it was 40% Dem and 60% Republican.

What is interesting is that despite it being a reliably Republican predominately Unincorporated part of the County, thus far we aren't seeing the Republican Turnout levels, nor turnout advantage that we might expect (This could still all obviously change.)

So here's a map that shows the borders of this area and some basic demographic information (Race/Ethnicity, Median Household Income, % of population 60+ and % of population with 4+ Yr Degrees.



So here several things jump out immediately.... even though this is a Republican stronghold it really isn't that old compared to many other parts of the district. It is generally Pretty Anglo and Upper Middle-Class by income, with a not especially dramatic level of education compared to what one might expect.

Note that the largest precinct within the district by Population, roughly aligns with the Census Data for a tract with a Median Household Income of $102k/Yr,

Also, although the Census tracts don't break down Occupation in as much detail, here is a chart of the Occupations that include the bulk of this portion of CD08.



So here we see an occupation breakdown that leans heavily White Collar and Professional.

Needless to say, these are exactly the types of suburban voters that a Democrat will need to make significant inroads with in order to win the district, considering relative age, occupation, and incomes.

We did see something similar in heavily Republican suburbs of South Allegheny among these types of voters that predominately resisted the major Democratic suburban swings between '12 and '16, so it is not completely out of the question that this could potentially occur within this portion of CD-08.

I would imagine that the Democratic Candidate would need to keep the Republican down to a +10 to +15 point lead in this portion of the district to have a shot at winning in CD-08.

Arizona Legislative District 4:

This is a relatively small sliver of the voting electorate within CD-08 only accounting for 2-3% of the total district vote, and is one of a only a small handful of consistently Democratic voting areas within the district.



Although we don't have a nice occupational chart, we see the occupational sectors skew much for Lower Middle-Class and Working Class occupations such as Sales, Administrative, Food Service and the like and only about 20% of the workforce employed in more "Professional" type occupations such as Management, Business, Computers, Engineering, etc....

So several things stand out here we have a population that includes a significant bloc of Democratic leaning constituencies since this part of the district is only 55% Anglo (Although likely a much larger share of Registered Voters) and a relatively young voting age demographic (32% of the entire population is 18-39 Years).

The key question for Democrats is will the ease of Vote-by-Mail in Arizona, the increased voter registration activities tied to the election to defeat Sheriff Joe, translate into both high turnout levels in the Special Election, and a high level of Democratic support?

There are plenty of other pockets similar to this scattered throughout CD-08 and Democrats will obviously need every vote they can get here.

Right now we're only seeing this Legislative District represent 1.5% of the total Early Vote, far below the 3% from the '16 GE, and Republicans are leaning 37-39% on the EV ballots cast thus far.

Democrats would likely need to hit 60% here to meet benchmarks, with 58% of the voters having rejected Sheriff Joe in November '16.

Will post more on some of the other Legislative Districts when I get a chance....

[NOVA Green]

Arizona Legislative District 13:

This one is a bit tricky since it encompasses a wide range of Political and Demographic terrain, but it is one of those areas where Democrats will need to perform well to contest CD-08, since not only does it account for 8-9% of the total CD-08 Vote Share, and although it is probably the 4th most Republican Legislative District located within CD-08, Flake only received 54% of the vote here in '12, "Sheriff Joe" only won here by 2% in '16, and Trump received "only" 56% of the Vote here in 2016, and ran a few points below his CD-08 average.

So what does the Census and Demographic data tell us about this section of the district?

Note: Some of the Census Data I needed to amalgamate by various Block Tracts to try to get the best possible data, and there were a few precincts within the CD-08 legislative portion of the district where it was either too labor intensive to get the data, so please don't view this as the definitive statement on the demographics of all the CD-08 portions of this Arizona Legislative district.



So where to start? We see a handful of heavily Anglo and older precincts (Pebble Creek & Wigwam stand out), a couple precincts that are borderline Anglo majority with solidly Middle-Class household income levels, and a relatively younger population (Desert Vista and Rio Paseo stand out here), and then we have relatively exurban precincts (Waddell and Alsup) which is a place where I am least confident of the demographic data, since I needed to try to consolidate among multiple Census tracts from Citrus Grove, to a couple slivers of Glendale, and then some of the Uninc areas surrounding that don't have any type of CDP designation.....

Now, what do the election results by precinct show us in 2016 for the Arizona Legislative District 13 part of CD-08?



So we see 43% of the 2016 Sheriff results come out of just three precincts that voted for Sheriff Joe, versus 7 precincts that voted for the Democratic Candidate.

Pebble Creek, which must be a Senior Only Community (88% 60+ Yrs) and is 93% Anglo voted +26% Trump, +14% Sheriff Joe, but was +37% Romney in '12 (+11% Dem Pres Swing) accounted for 21% of the CD-08 AZ District 13 vote in 2016....

So interestingly enough these Upper Middle-Class Seniors (MHI of $65k/Yr in an overwhelmingly retirement community) appear to have swung more Democratic than Maricopa at large in the Presidential Election, while still backing the Sheriff.

Swing Chart by Precinct:



If we look at Wigwam (80% Anglo, 33% 60+) and 19% of CD-08 sections of AZ-LD 13, we see Trump only winning by 10 Points, but going 54-46% Dem for Sheriff.

So it is not inconceivable that Anglo Seniors in CD-08 might potentially swing increasingly Democrat in a Special Election where the Democratic Candidate has been pressing hard on Health Care related issues, where much of the dramatic support for ACA has been coming from Seniors that are digging it now that they see how it actually works for them, while the 'Pubs tried to kill ACA (Thanks to Senator McCain for their failure).

The other major Republican precinct within the district is Waddell (67-26 Trump), and 20% of the 2016 vote within LD 13 portion of CD-08 and also where I am least confident of the demographic data presented....

Although it's not really an "Old folks precinct" per se by Phoenix standards, I strongly suspect that the Anglo proportion of the voters are much higher than demographic data indicates, and that there's something about Desert Rats that want to live outside of any type of Municipal boundaries to lower their tax burden vs those that prefer to live within communities that provide a range of services from water/sewage/garbage/law enforcement, etc....

I don't really pretend to have an angle on this precinct, and it's a bit harder to read than most others within the district.

What about the rest of the Legislative District???

We don't really see much in the way of Democratic strongholds, Luke Field stands out as the only HRC precinct within the district, but I didn't run the demographic numbers here, but has long been the most Democratic precinct within the district even in 2014 for the Gov Election where the Dem candidate captured 43% of the Vote against the 'Pubs 50.7%.

Desert Vista obviously stands out here considering not only is it the least Anglo precinct that I pulled numbers from (48% Anglo, 31% Latino, 8% Black, 7% Asian), but also has the highest Median Household Income of any precinct surveyed $95k/Yr, AND 35% of the population is 18-39 Years old.

This precinct went 45-47 Trump, but 56-43 Dem for Sheriff, 42-57 Romney (+17% Dem Swing), and 45-52 Flake in '12.

Rio Paseo in theory be more Democratic than it is (43-49 Trump) but 54-46 Dem Sheriff, but still had the Highest Dem swing than any other precinct within this portion of district (+15% Dem Pres '12 > '16).

So, there's quite a bit more data out for this portion of CD-08, but one of the key things to look at since we don't really have much in the way of "Ancestral Democratic" places to look at here, are those places which swung hardest Democrat between '12 and '16.

Here we see a mixture of the greatest swings happening to largely Anglo and Senior precincts (Pebble Creek and Wigwam), and those places with the highest concentration of Ethnic Minorities (Desert Vista and Rio Paseo), even though there are significant differences in MHI and Demographics between these two Communities.

Although I still haven't fully processed all of the data compiled yet for this district, it's pretty clear that there is a potential path for a Dem in CD-08 Legislative District 13 that expands upon the gains among Senior Anglos, while simultaneously achieving high voter turnout within those precincts that are ground zero of the "New Emerging Democratic Coalition" within the 'Burbs of Phoenix.

[NOVA Green]

OK, here are the charts that I was trying to embed in my post yesterday to look at voter turnout by precincts through the April 5th Update (Yes, I know there is a new one out today, but haven't been able to get into updating the spreadsheet yet).

This includes the TOTAL precinct turnout through the 4/5/18 update for precincts where over 48% of the total ballots have been returned to date.

I sorted by % of ballots already received and color coded on the basis of '16 PRES and '16 Sheriff Margins, with the darker shades of Blue being the most Republican in a CD that went + 23 Trump and only + 5 "Sheriff Joe". The white cells in the PRES margins category are for those areas that voted Trump by less than his CD average.



What do these precincts where the highest level of turnout have been thus far in the Special Election share in common?

They are overwhelmingly Elderly, Anglo and fairly heavily Republican as well as concentrated within a relatively small slice of the CD-08 by Population.

The other common denominator is that they did not really experience the significant swings towards the Democratic opponent to Sheriff Joe, that much of the rest of the district did.

This is part of the reason why I consider them relatively inelastic, although it should be noted that Sun City itself (As opposed to Sun City West) is certainly a place where there might be a potential Democratic swing in '18/'20 in AZ.

Still, to follow to the point that I made yesterday, one must wonder to what extent Republicans have essentially cannibalized their EV margins by front-loading these areas. This means that by logical extension, the overall DEM-REP-IND EV % and ultimately TOTAL election results % will look very different than the current Party turnout %.  (More on that later in a subsequent post).

Which precincts so far have the lowest turnout levels?

Again tried to use a similar kind of coding system and just focus more on the color shading rather than a staggered margin fancy scaling system and all that.



So surprise, surprise precincts that have the lowest Early Voter Turnout levels to date, also happen to correspond to the most Democratic precincts (In General).

Republicans like to vote early and vote often to counterbalance perceived voting fraud from over-represented ethnic minorities....   (JOKE---- couldn't resist so please no offense my 'Pub friends and family out there).

Ok--- now really for the most part this list tends to correlate much more heavily with precincts with higher proportions of younger, Latino, and working-class populations than many other parts of CD-08.

El Mirage is perhaps the most observable, but as you can see from the list there are similar communities scattered all around the district with places in Goodyear and Surprise showing up heavily on the list, not to mention a couple precincts from Peoria.

So.... Arizona CD-08 is a "Tale of Two Districts" where the Older Anglo SoCal and Midwest retiree Republicans have traditionally been a dominant political force, with several newer generations, including the increasingly Multi-Ethnic Millennial Generation that tends to lean Democratic even here, with the Middling Turnout levels of the "Bridging Generation" being where most likely any election in this district will be decided....

(I did not post the 33% of the precincts that I consider to be in that swing category yet, but I'll give y'all of y'alls a hint to anyone that's been following my posts, it really comes down to how heavily key parts of Glendale and Peoria swing--- that are essentially more of your Middle-Aged and Middle-Class majority Anglo precincts, much more likely to have kids in public schools, registered Independents, and most importantly is where if we are going to see the district flip in a Special Election is where Democrats will turn out in high numbers, Republicans might be more likely to flip, and Indies can swing wildly.)

Something to chew on....

[NOVA Green]

Decided to shift focus slightly here, since it appears that we will have some updated results of Early Vote totals by Partisan Registration and Arizona State legislative districts to potentially provide us with some means of trying to interpret early voting results as they roll in from the Great State of Arizona...

People might want to file away or bookmark some of this data as a reference point over the next couple weeks....

So here is a chart I made that shows the current Early Voting numbers by legislative districts compared against the 2016 General Election and 2014 General Election that gives us an idea of the relative vote share by State Districts.



I'll try to keep updating this semi-regularly as we get updated results for EV numbers by district.

Now, the key caveat here is that the numbers for '14 and '16 are the total vote share by district (Including Election Day ballots, as well as all Early Voting ballots) and obviously the numbers on the left are constantly under development.

Although I don't pretend to be a fluent expert on the dynamics of Early Voting in Arizona, but in Oregon that has long been an all Vote-by-Mail State, we typically tend to see a massive surge of ballots show up in the last week on an election, and these frequently tend to come from younger and Middle-Aged voters, Cities/Suburbs, and tend to skew a bit more Democratic than some of the earliest wave of mail-in-ballots.

Thus far we are seeing one major trend in CD-08 vote share that stands out, which is the extremely lopsided numbers from State District 22, which has always been the largest "Vote Bank" in the district, and looking at an off-year election in 2014 tends to have an even heavier weight.

If we look at the next largest district State District 21 we see a relatively stable performance compared to '14 and '16.

Elsewhere thus far we are seeing significant drops in most other State Districts, with the exception of State District 13.

The largest % drop of EV in AZ-08 compared to total Vote Share by State District, is in District 20.

This is perhaps not surprising, considering that those districts that vote early early by mail, versus those areas with much higher rates of "Same Day" turnout are going to experience some variances, but it is still important to continue to observe going forward.

Now, how did these Arizona State Districts vote between 2012 and 2016 for some key races?



So what does this matrix that I generated tell us (If anything) about voting patterns in CD-08?

1.) Look closely at the 2012 US-SEN results by district to see how well a "New Republican Congressional Candidate" performed by State District in CD-08 in what was generally considered to be a favorable Republican election year.

      A.) We see really only three Republican State District strongholds (Districts 1, 15, and 22) and then some relative marginal numbers in Districts 13,20, & 21.

      B.)Some of the margins are explained by a 3rd Party Libertarian Candidate that performed quite well, but Trump still outperformed Flake in most of the State Districts as a % of Total 'Pub Votes, with the exception of State District 15, 29 & 30.

2.) The closest thing we have to a winning Democratic playbook in CD-08 would be the 2016 Maricopa County Sheriff Election where Sheriff Joe won by 5% within the CD.

    A.) We see a massive breakthough in House District 20 (Most of Glendale within the District), that was only +9 Flake in '12, and also where there was a significant drop in 'Pub support between the '12 and '16 Presidential Elections, but basically where even in the '16 Pres and '12 Sen election, only 52% voted 'Pub.

    B.) District 21 is starting to look like increasingly marginal 'Pub territory looking at the '12 US SEN results, Trump only capturing 54% in '16, and Sheriff Joe only winning in a squeaker here....

       As I previously stated, it's all about Peoria, Arizona and considering that Sun City didn't swing hard Dem on Sheriff, means that the part of the district in Peoria and Surprise likely played a key role here.

3.) Ok--- thus far we have seen much higher EV numbers come out of the most heavily Republican State Senate District within CD-08 (District 22) and also District 15 (One of the only other overwhelmingly 'Pub Districts), and much lower EV turnout among the handful of Dem leaning districts, and also within the key District 20, where Dem's need to win big in Glendale to make this anything close to a horserace).

4. Now, what do the early voting numbers tell us from CD-08 compared against previous margins from recent key elections?



So, interestingly enough the total Registered Republican vs Registered Democratic vote margins appear to be weakest in the most Republican Districts within CD-08.

The places where Republican vs Democratic EV turnout compared to previous elections is highest compared to total votes are in the most heavily Democratic or potentially Democratic leaning areas (Where there is much higher % of Same Day voting)....

There could be multiple explanations for the significant decline of Republican EV turnout in the most heavily Republican portions of the County, and certainly one could possibly be the explanation that I suggested earlier in this thread, that one can't automatically assume that Independents tend to Lean Democratic in this particular district, which could obviously perhaps explain why there appears to have been a bit of a collapse in the most heavily 'Pub Arizona districts, but that might well be a bit of a stretch.

At this point it's looking like the 'Pub numbers in State Districts (1,15, and 22) are starting to look fairly weak, district 20 (Must win heavily Dem area) strong, plus some relatively favorable early indicators from district 21 (Must flip Dem area)....

To be Updated and Continued accordingly, but still we now have some additional data points to watch the EV in "Real Time" without knowing how Dems/Reps/Indies will breakdown in final voting numbers within the district....

[NOVA Green]

So, started doing a review of some of the demographics of portions of CD-08 to see what if anything that might indicate.

If we look at the preceding information that I posted the other day, the Legislative District 1 portion of CD-08, with generally Democrats only receiving about 30% of the Vote and Republicans generally hitting 65-70%, with the exception of the '16 Sheriff race where it was 40% Dem and 60% Republican.

What is interesting is that despite it being a reliably Republican predominately Unincorporated part of the County, thus far we aren't seeing the Republican Turnout levels, nor turnout advantage that we might expect (This could still all obviously change.)

So here's a map that shows the borders of this area and some basic demographic information (Race/Ethnicity, Median Household Income, % of population 60+ and % of population with 4+ Yr Degrees.



So here several things jump out immediately.... even though this is a Republican stronghold it really isn't that old compared to many other parts of the district. It is generally Pretty Anglo and Upper Middle-Class by income, with a not especially dramatic level of education compared to what one might expect.

Note that the largest precinct within the district by Population, roughly aligns with the Census Data for a tract with a Median Household Income of $102k/Yr,

Also, although the Census tracts don't break down Occupation in as much detail, here is a chart of the Occupations that include the bulk of this portion of CD08.



So here we see an occupation breakdown that leans heavily White Collar and Professional.

Needless to say, these are exactly the types of suburban voters that a Democrat will need to make significant inroads with in order to win the district, considering relative age, occupation, and incomes.

We did see something similar in heavily Republican suburbs of South Allegheny among these types of voters that predominately resisted the major Democratic suburban swings between '12 and '16, so it is not completely out of the question that this could potentially occur within this portion of CD-08.

I would imagine that the Democratic Candidate would need to keep the Republican down to a +10 to +15 point lead in this portion of the district to have a shot at winning in CD-08.

Arizona Legislative District 4:

This is a relatively small sliver of the voting electorate within CD-08 only accounting for 2-3% of the total district vote, and is one of a only a small handful of consistently Democratic voting areas within the district.



Although we don't have a nice occupational chart, we see the occupational sectors skew much for Lower Middle-Class and Working Class occupations such as Sales, Administrative, Food Service and the like and only about 20% of the workforce employed in more "Professional" type occupations such as Management, Business, Computers, Engineering, etc....

So several things stand out here we have a population that includes a significant bloc of Democratic leaning constituencies since this part of the district is only 55% Anglo (Although likely a much larger share of Registered Voters) and a relatively young voting age demographic (32% of the entire population is 18-39 Years).

The key question for Democrats is will the ease of Vote-by-Mail in Arizona, the increased voter registration activities tied to the election to defeat Sheriff Joe, translate into both high turnout levels in the Special Election, and a high level of Democratic support?

There are plenty of other pockets similar to this scattered throughout CD-08 and Democrats will obviously need every vote they can get here.

Right now we're only seeing this Legislative District represent 1.5% of the total Early Vote, far below the 3% from the '16 GE, and Republicans are leaning 37-39% on the EV ballots cast thus far.

Democrats would likely need to hit 60% here to meet benchmarks, with 58% of the voters having rejected Sheriff Joe in November '16.

Will post more on some of the other Legislative Districts when I get a chance....

[NOVA Green]

Arizona Legislative District 13:

This one is a bit tricky since it encompasses a wide range of Political and Demographic terrain, but it is one of those areas where Democrats will need to perform well to contest CD-08, since not only does it account for 8-9% of the total CD-08 Vote Share, and although it is probably the 4th most Republican Legislative District located within CD-08, Flake only received 54% of the vote here in '12, "Sheriff Joe" only won here by 2% in '16, and Trump received "only" 56% of the Vote here in 2016, and ran a few points below his CD-08 average.

So what does the Census and Demographic data tell us about this section of the district?

Note: Some of the Census Data I needed to amalgamate by various Block Tracts to try to get the best possible data, and there were a few precincts within the CD-08 legislative portion of the district where it was either too labor intensive to get the data, so please don't view this as the definitive statement on the demographics of all the CD-08 portions of this Arizona Legislative district.



So where to start? We see a handful of heavily Anglo and older precincts (Pebble Creek & Wigwam stand out), a couple precincts that are borderline Anglo majority with solidly Middle-Class household income levels, and a relatively younger population (Desert Vista and Rio Paseo stand out here), and then we have relatively exurban precincts (Waddell and Alsup) which is a place where I am least confident of the demographic data, since I needed to try to consolidate among multiple Census tracts from Citrus Grove, to a couple slivers of Glendale, and then some of the Uninc areas surrounding that don't have any type of CDP designation.....

Now, what do the election results by precinct show us in 2016 for the Arizona Legislative District 13 part of CD-08?



So we see 43% of the 2016 Sheriff results come out of just three precincts that voted for Sheriff Joe, versus 7 precincts that voted for the Democratic Candidate.

Pebble Creek, which must be a Senior Only Community (88% 60+ Yrs) and is 93% Anglo voted +26% Trump, +14% Sheriff Joe, but was +37% Romney in '12 (+11% Dem Pres Swing) accounted for 21% of the CD-08 AZ District 13 vote in 2016....

So interestingly enough these Upper Middle-Class Seniors (MHI of $65k/Yr in an overwhelmingly retirement community) appear to have swung more Democratic than Maricopa at large in the Presidential Election, while still backing the Sheriff.

Swing Chart by Precinct:



If we look at Wigwam (80% Anglo, 33% 60+) and 19% of CD-08 sections of AZ-LD 13, we see Trump only winning by 10 Points, but going 54-46% Dem for Sheriff.

So it is not inconceivable that Anglo Seniors in CD-08 might potentially swing increasingly Democrat in a Special Election where the Democratic Candidate has been pressing hard on Health Care related issues, where much of the dramatic support for ACA has been coming from Seniors that are digging it now that they see how it actually works for them, while the 'Pubs tried to kill ACA (Thanks to Senator McCain for their failure).

The other major Republican precinct within the district is Waddell (67-26 Trump), and 20% of the 2016 vote within LD 13 portion of CD-08 and also where I am least confident of the demographic data presented....

Although it's not really an "Old folks precinct" per se by Phoenix standards, I strongly suspect that the Anglo proportion of the voters are much higher than demographic data indicates, and that there's something about Desert Rats that want to live outside of any type of Municipal boundaries to lower their tax burden vs those that prefer to live within communities that provide a range of services from water/sewage/garbage/law enforcement, etc....

I don't really pretend to have an angle on this precinct, and it's a bit harder to read than most others within the district.

What about the rest of the Legislative District???

We don't really see much in the way of Democratic strongholds, Luke Field stands out as the only HRC precinct within the district, but I didn't run the demographic numbers here, but has long been the most Democratic precinct within the district even in 2014 for the Gov Election where the Dem candidate captured 43% of the Vote against the 'Pubs 50.7%.

Desert Vista obviously stands out here considering not only is it the least Anglo precinct that I pulled numbers from (48% Anglo, 31% Latino, 8% Black, 7% Asian), but also has the highest Median Household Income of any precinct surveyed $95k/Yr, AND 35% of the population is 18-39 Years old.

This precinct went 45-47 Trump, but 56-43 Dem for Sheriff, 42-57 Romney (+17% Dem Swing), and 45-52 Flake in '12.

Rio Paseo in theory be more Democratic than it is (43-49 Trump) but 54-46 Dem Sheriff, but still had the Highest Dem swing than any other precinct within this portion of district (+15% Dem Pres '12 > '16).

So, there's quite a bit more data out for this portion of CD-08, but one of the key things to look at since we don't really have much in the way of "Ancestral Democratic" places to look at here, are those places which swung hardest Democrat between '12 and '16.

Here we see a mixture of the greatest swings happening to largely Anglo and Senior precincts (Pebble Creek and Wigwam), and those places with the highest concentration of Ethnic Minorities (Desert Vista and Rio Paseo), even though there are significant differences in MHI and Demographics between these two Communities.

Although I still haven't fully processed all of the data compiled yet for this district, it's pretty clear that there is a potential path for a Dem in CD-08 Legislative District 13 that expands upon the gains among Senior Anglos, while simultaneously achieving high voter turnout within those precincts that are ground zero of the "New Emerging Democratic Coalition" within the 'Burbs of Phoenix.

[NOVA Green]

Arizona LD-15 precincts located within CD-08: Social and Political Geography:

Continuing my series on the political and social demographics of CD-08, it's time to take a look at this district, which basically includes six precincts located within the City of Phoenix and accounts for roughly 6% of the total CD-08 vote in a typical General Election.



As we can see from looking at the demographic information by precinct, the fundamental characteristics of this district tend to skew fairly Middle-Aged, with a relatively small Senior population compared to many other parts of the district, Upper Income and Upper Middle-Class, fairly well educated, and a bit more Anglo than the district at large.

Politically, it tends to lean fairly reliably Republican:

2016 Pres: +24 Trump       (+6% D Swing)
2012 Pres: +30 Romney
2012 SEN:  +24 Flake

However, in the 2016 Maricopa County Sheriff race, it was only 48-52 Republican.

Several obvious points here, is that this is exactly the type of area where a Democratic candidate will need to perform well to make this a competitive election since these are precisely the types of voters that thus far in Maricopa County have been resistant to voting Democratic, even as many similar areas in the Country swung heavily towards HRC in 2016.

Let's take a look at how these six precincts voted in the 2016 General Election, as well as Turnout thus far in the 2018 Special Election, AND the 2012 PRES and SEN races....





Thus far we see the most Democratic precinct (Julie) with the lowest % of ballots returned to date for LD-15. This was the only precinct here to vote against Sheriff Joe, and where Trump only received 51% of the vote in 2016, and logically a place where one might expect a Democrat to perform fairly well within this election, considering it skews younger with a relatively large Minority component. Here we have the highest % of 3rd Party defections in 2016, with 10% supporting LIB, GRN, WI, etc.... This same precinct mirrors the overall 2012 to 2016 PRES swings within CD-08 LD-15 (+5% D), so is potentially a good composite of the precinct to look at as we move deeper into 2018, although 3rd Party defections likely played a major role in the numbers being much lower for HRC than the overall precinct profile might suggest.

Julie RV: (26 D- 38 R- 34 I)

The next lowest share of turnout is Creedence, which although it is also heavily younger in population, is much more Anglo than Julie, and also fairly Republican, excepting the '16 Sheriff Race. It is slightly less Republican than most of the other precincts in this portion of the LD, and the only place to swing towards Trump in 2016, which was likely mainly a result of 8% of voters defecting to 3rd Party Candidates.

RV: (22 D- 45 R- 31 I)

Now, lets shift focus to a couple other precincts where we are seeing the highest level of Turnout to date within CD-08 LD-15:

Pyramid Peak:

Accounted for 28% of the vote here in 2016, making it the largest precinct by vote share.

The wealthiest precinct within the district as measured by MHI, with a Median Household Income of $ 108k/Yr, 38% of the Population with at least a 4+ Yr College Degree,and also the 2nd largest Asian-American population within this portion of LD-15 (7%)....

Traditionally heavily Republican and current voter turnout is 37% (2nd Highest within LD-15), is also one of two precincts where we saw the greatest PRES swing '12 > '16 (+9.5% Dem).

As I suggested on previous posts on this thread, places where we saw the greatest '12> '16 Dem swings within CD-08, as well as places where we saw the greatest Trump/ Sheriff Joe swings, might well be the types of places where if a Dem will win an election in CD-08.

RV: (22 D- 48 R- 30 I)

Desert Sage:

This precinct is the one where I am least confident in the Demographic profile, because of US Census tract data doesn't cleanly overlap the way it does in the other precincts here.

Still, the basic demographic profile indicates that it has the 2nd lowest Anglo population within LD-15 (72% Anglo) and the highest Asian-American population (11%)....

Looks to be heavily Middle-Class and Middle-Aged voters with an extremely low proportion of the population aged 60+.

The biggest swings between the PRES numbers '12>'16 occurred here, with a +9.8% Dem swing.

Overall voter turnout to date skews towards the Middle Range of Ld-15 to date, AND it was "Sheriff Joe's" 2nd best precinct (+5.3% R).

It was the most Pub precinct in the '14 Governor race, the most Pub precinct in the '12 Pres race and Flake grabbed 63% of the vote in the '12 SEN race.

Really curious about this precinct, (Although honestly I'm always curious about most precincts in the US), because it is a bit unusual for CD-08 in many ways....

RV: (21 D- 48 R- 30 I)

OK--- we have two precincts left to check on with the Socio-Demographic data overlapped with Electoral Data....

Happy Valley:

The most 'Pub precinct in the '16 PRES GE election (30-64 Trump, 46-54 R Sheriff,). Also the 2nd most Pub precinct in '12, and most Pub precinct in the '12 US-Sen race.

The 2nd wealthiest precinct when it comes to Median Household Income ($104k/Yr). The highest % of population aged 60+ Yrs (24%), and the 2nd highest precinct with people that have a 4+ Year College Degree....

We see the highest % Turnout to Date within the LD, considering that it is the oldest is perhaps not surprising.

We also see only a +2.5% D PRES swing between '12 > '16, with only a 6% 3rd Party defection in '16.

Keep watching the turnout here, since it's one of those places where apparently the older Anglos are extremely heavily Republican, AND the upper-income Middle-Aged Anglos are also not especially "swingy" either.

RV: (21 D- 52 R- 26 I)

Lindner:

The last precinct within the district is a weird hybrid, with the Northern half of the precinct looking much more like Julie, and the Southern half appears to be one of those "Senior Only" type Phoenix area suburban places....

The Northern portion of the precinct tends to be much more Latino than the Southern Portion, and although the overall precinct MHI of $66.5k makes it look like more of Middle-Class community, the reality is that once you factor in the Senior Population the data starts to get murkier.

Overall this precinct looks like one of the least "Trump friendly precincts" (57.9% Trump), and one of the lowest '12>'16 Dem swings (+1.6%), but actually the 2nd best precinct for the Dem running against Sheriff Joe.

The key question here is the balance between the Senior Voters to the South and more varied demographic landscape to the North....

RV: (24 D- 44 R- 31 R)

Wish we had more data points to work with when it comes to a competitive Dem race in CD-08, but hey got to work with what we got, right?



To be continued with LD-20 (Must win big for a DEM in CD-08)....

[NOVA Green]

So we have some new EV Turnout numbers by Party Registration and PEVL Votes (Those voters pre-approved) to Vote-by-Mail) that includes data from Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, that was just updated today on the election website.

We're now up to ~ 144k Total Votes, or roughly 1/3 of the Registered Voters within CD-08.

The AZ Data Guru has been a bit over the map on turnout models, but currently has it at around 50% of the final total votes (280k Total Turnout), but posted a graph today as to why the uncertainty in total estimated voter turnout numbers.....

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer

If we look at the PEVL voters, already 45% of those that received Mail-in Ballots have them returned and "in the bank"!!!

Roughly 70% of Registered Voters have Mail-in-Ballots and 30% can only vote same-day, hence my multiple previous statements on this thread that we should have a much clearer idea of the potential partisan composition of the electorate by Election Eve Monday.



Now, the key thing to note here is that thus far, both Registered Democratic and Republicans appear to have already delivered 50% of their respective mail-in-base to the polls, whereas Indies are lagging at 37%.....

Another way of looking at it is that Dems basically have 34k Mail-In-Ballots outstanding, Pubs 72k, and Indies 65k!!!!

Obviously Dems should hope that these Indy Ballots start surging towards the endgame, and aggressively target various precincts and locations with last minute GOTV efforts in places where that would likely net a favorable outcome, since in a straight up DEM-REP fistfight in CD-08 with weak Indy voting, the math becomes increasingly problematic.

Time to look at EV voting numbers to date by LD...



So here we have perhaps a better sense of the changes within the state of the election a week after we started to get our first surge of early ballots....

The key item that I look at are the changing overall Vote Share between LD-20 and LD-22 precincts located within CD-08....

LD-22 generally accounts for the Largest chunk of CD-08 Voters (35% in '16 and 37% in the off-year '14 election).

It not only the largest LD within CD-08 by Vote Share, but also the 2nd most Republican District.....

LD-22 Vote shares within CD-08 have dropped from 42% to 40% between 4/5 and 4/17 posting numbers....

This is likely because of the early "vote banking" from overwhelmingly Republican Sun City West (Elderly overwhelmingly Anglo Upper Middle Class retirees marketed to SoCal Seniors thinking of making a move to Phoenix....)

The fact that these shares continue to drop is obviously an extremely positive sign for the Democratic Contender, considering that unless something completely bizarre happens like a +10 D win, THIS will be the CD-08 'Pub Firewall to protect against major Indy swings elsewhere...

This is why I monitor by LD as a Macro Level overview in the fast moving data flow of VbM elections....

We are now seeing LD-20 starting to getting closer to catching up with their 9% Vote Shares in the '16 and '14 GEs....

This is significant, since as I mentioned previously, this is a place where DEMs need HUGE % margins and Turnout to make this election close.

Meanwhile, what I consider the likely decided factor is LD-21 (26-28% of LD-08), hence my previous "How Will it Play in Peoria" references, that in many ways is this is really the closest thing to a "Swing District" within LD-08....

Current EV numbers are actually closely tracking historical patterns as a total district vote share.....

Trump only received 54% of the PRES vote here in '16, and Sheriff Joe only received 50.3% of the Vote in '16....  AND Flake only captured 52% of the Vote in '12.....

Although we don't have much in the way of objective modeling when it comes to D-R-I historical results, THIS is the LD that will likely provide the make-break for either the DEM or PUB in CD-08....

[NOVA Green]

I'm starting to wonder if Republicans are running into some Turnout issues in LD-01 and LD-15....
basically Exurban Northern Phoenix Area and a few precincts in NW Phoenix....

Started to think about this since I found some odd numbers in both LDs earlier today, ran some numbers, and it does appear that Republican Early Voting in these relatively affluent Republican areas is way lower than one would expect from traditional Early Voting habits....

Here are the precinct numbers for turnout among Pre-Approved Early Voters, and we do see that Dems are well exceeding their Party Vote Share by PEVL, compared to Pubs in the vast majority of precincts....

One must certainly wonder to what extent this pattern also exists in the wealthier and educated precincts in places like North Glendale, North Peoria, etc....

Throw in a 60-40 Indy Scene in similar places, makes the district look extremely different from a political perspective...

[NOVA Green]

So to expand upon an item that I first observed last night, it does appear that Republicans do appear to have a significant Early Voting Turnout Gap in many Upper-Income Middle-Aged Anglo precincts within CD-08....

This is potentially significant in terms of where we might observe major swings towards the Democratic Candidate on Election Night, since these are the types of places where voters tend to be heavily Registered Republican, and vote early by Mail...

After spending a bit of time reviewing CD-08, my current take is that this was not only designed as a "SAFE PUB" district, but more significantly designed to appeal to multiple different elements of the Maricopa County Republican Coalition, that include the following voting blocs:

1.) Senior Citizens
2.) Upper Middle-Class Anglo Professionals
3.) Fast Growing Exurban populations

Throw in a healthy dose of Middle and Working Class communities with a significant Latino population, but where the population is majority Anglo... and meet AZ CD-08....

So let's look at those places where the Democratic Party has been turning out their Registered Voters at a much higher % than Registered Republican Voters to see what the early vote turnout battle looks like To Date....



Although there is no question that these are overwhelmingly Republican Precincts, one must certainly wonder if Republican EV turnout is extremely low in places like this, to what extent we will see a higher level of swings among Registered Republicans, and most significantly Independent voters break hard Dem....



Now let's look at those precincts where EV REG DEM turnout is running in the Mid Range compared to EV REG REP turnout....



So here we are starting to see Democrats turning out their base in greater numbers in some Senior Citizen precincts in Sun City and Sun City West, combined with a mixture of relatively Upper-Income Anglo precincts...

Note the 2nd range down is heavily concentrated in LD-22, which is basically the most Republican LD within CD-08, excepting perhaps LD-01 (Where we saw disproportionate EV Turnout levels covered above)....

So, let's overlap that briefly with the 2016 GE numbers for PRES and Sheriff...

....

Obviously there is a flip side to the equation, which involves the much lower Turnout levels in more heavily Latino precincts among Early Voters, that I previously discussed especially in my LD-21 post, but is equally applicable to LD-04, LD-29, and LD-30, and to some extent parts of LD-20....

There are massive EV turnout gaps in some of the most Latino, Working-Class and heavily Democratic precincts within CD-08....

Look at the EV numbers from the following precincts: Butler, Dysart, Glencroft, Goodyear, and Surprise for example....

We can roll through various other precincts with relatively large Working-Class Latino populations, from places around El Mirage, Goodyear and the Southern precincts of Glendale within CD-08, and we similar patterns....

Sure, this election will be most likely won or lost on how heavily Anglo Seniors, Upper-Income, and Middle-Class voters swing in a special election, but at this point I'm not seeing the turnout from the relatively minor sliver of Working-Class Latino communities yet to indicate the same level of enthusiasm that we saw in the '16 General Election where Donald Trump and Sheriff Joe were both on the ballot....

[NOVA Green]

Now that the overwhelming majority of ballots have been counted in CD-08, excepting an extremely small number of ballots outstanding from active duty service members and Americans living overseas, we have pretty close to a complete picture of the election....

Let's start briefly with a few topics such as turnout and early voting:

1.) Based upon official results, it's looking like overall turnout was about 40.4% of Registered Voters, compared to roughly 49.9% in the 2014 November General Election....

Although this number sounds pretty impressive for a Special Election, it is significantly lower than early voter models had predicted based upon historical data.

2.) It appears that voters in Arizona are increasingly relying on Early Voting, rather than Election Day Voting, as the State increasingly transitions more towards a Vote-by-Mail (VbM) model.

In the 2012 GE roughly 70% of voters cast their ballots through Early Voting here, in 2016 roughly 80% did....

In the 2018 Special Election, roughly 90% of voters cast their ballots early....

3.) This explains some of the discrepancies we have seen in the various polls of the district, where trying to weigh EV vs ED numbers alongside of Party Registration Data becomes a bit problematic.

4.) A relatively low turnout election (By the historical standards of this CD) skewed the electorate heavily Senior, in a CD where Senior Citizens even in normal Presidential GE environments tend to be a pretty hefty chunk of the electorate.

5.) I already touched on EV turnout by Party Registration in previous posts, but what we do know is that EVs represented a much larger share of the total vote compared to RVs in terms of Registered Republicans, as well as to a somewhat lesser extent Registered Democrats, and Registered Independents comprised a much smaller share of the electorate than their Voter Registration status....

Unfortunately, I don't have the final numbers broken down by party registration by EV/ED but as of the official numbers posted Monday, there were 155.7k EV ballots that were cast by registered party ( 27.9 % D, 48.3% R, 23.8% I)....

6.) Considering that 90% of the electorate voted early, the actual Election Day numbers appear to indicate that not only did registered independents that voted swung hard Democrat, but additionally that there was a significant Republican defection as well towards the Centrist Democrat running in this district.

Ok--- now let's look at a few numbers and charts.

Here are the % of Vote Share by Arizona Legislate District (LD), results by LD for the special election, and historical results by LD for precincts located within this CD.



Several things to note here:

1.) LD-22 was disproportionately represented in this special election, accounting for 38.5% of the Vote share in the Special Election...  for historical standards it accounted for 36.6% in the "off-year" 2014 General Election, and only 34.9% in the 2016 General Election, much closer to the 34.1% RV share. Part of this might be explained by the fact that it contains some of the fastest growing exurbs within CD-08.

This is especially significant, as it is the 2nd most Republican LD of CD '08 and voted for Lesko by +10.

2.) Vote share was down, even compared to the 2014 GE in the handful of "Democratic Leaning" LDs (LD-4, LD-29, and LD-30), which although they contain a relatively small share of the total electorate, start to become more significant in a hypothetical close election within the district.

3.) Vote share was significantly down in LD-20, which in previous postings I described as not only a "must win" LD for Dems, but a "must win by double-digits" place.

4.) LD-21 vote share was roughly between '14 GE and '16 GE numbers, which I had described as a "must flip" Dem LD.

Now what interesting patterns stand out from the April 24th results by LD?

1.) Democrats achieved their best numbers ever in recent elections in LD-22.

The swing compared to the 2016 Sheriff Election was higher here than anywhere else within CD-08, and the fact that a "Generic Republican" only won it by +9.5 should obviously be of deep concern to any Republican observer of Arizona politics, as it was a + 32 Romney and + 28 Trump LD and 47% of Registered Voters are Republicans (and close to 50% of the EV).

2.) Other interesting record gains for Democrats are observable in the heavily Upper Middle-Class and educated areas North of Phoenix (LD-01) and Northwest Phoenix (LD-15).

LD-01 has long been a base Republican stronghold with not only a HUGE Republican voter registration edge, but also regularly a +35 to +40 R margin edge, so seeing only a +20 R edge for a 2nd Election (the only previous one was Sheriff Joe) is noteworthy.

LD-15 is an interesting bag.... one the one hand it has the 3rd highest % of Registered Pubs in CD-08, but increasingly appears to be flirting with the Democratic Party... Needless to say, there are plenty of other similar precincts in what is generally considered solidly Republican "North Phoenix".


3.) LD-21 is an interesting beast, and although it appears that this was a Republican HOLD based upon the top-line numbers, what is obscured is that extremely low turnout in heavily "Base Democratic" precincts around El Mirage, and parts of "South Peoria", is the main reason we didn't see a flip here, despite some pretty favorable swings towards the Dems in the more Upper Middle-Class neighborhoods, and to some extent in Sun City as well...

4.) We actually saw a drop in Democratic margins in three LD's compared to the 2016 Sheriff Election (LD-4, LD-29, LD-30)....

These are relatively small LD's (See note above on Vote Share by LD), but still elections are won and lost on the margins, as I frequently like to emphasize....

These areas all have an extremely higher number of Latinos, Younger, and more Working-Class voters...

Democrats would obviously want to see turnout levels in November in these areas be more like 2014 GE numbers (or higher), which is entirely plausible this November considering that Maricopa County residents will be barraged by TV ads for months with all of the competitive elections coming up.

Will be posting shortly with some additional nuggets, now that I have more raw data from the "final" results entered into the Excel Worksheet, just need to run a few formulas, do a bit of compare/contrast, and figure out which themes are the most relevant when examining this election.

[NOVA Green]

Time to take a look at the Senior Vote in Cd-08....

We know from official AZ data that the average and median age of EV in CD-08 was close to 65 Years old...

In most congressional districts it starts to get tricky trying to examine the Senior Vote since the population is not distributed in a manner where we can examine the Senior Vote in greater detail.

Fortunately when it comes to data analysis, we do have some real data from Arizona, since the district not only reports EV by Age, but additionally we have massive clusters of Senior Only Communities, so at least we can look at the numbers in much more extensive detail than normal, without having to rely solely on Statewide exit polls, etc....

This is not exhaustive of the Senior Vote in CD-08, and essentially is only representative of the heavily Anglo Senior only planned communities, which generally tend to be from more Upper Middle-Class backgrounds, than the Senior electorate at large within the district.

Let's start by looking at the vote share for these Senior Only communities in recent Elections in CD-08...



So here we see these communities represented approximately 25% of the total vote in CD-08 in the April special election and a slightly higher share in the 2014 General Election.

If we look at Presidential Election years, these communities comprised roughly 19% of the vote in 2012, and only 17.2% in 2016 where there was overall higher voter turnout in Maricopa County, much likely caused by the combination of Trump and Sheriff Joe being on the ballot.

It will be interesting to observe if these distributions change in November '18, compared to the Special Election in '18 and GE '14...

Let's break down these communities into three categories Sun City, Sun City West, and Misc Other Planned Senior communities with both a chart and graph for each....

Sun City Historical Voting Chart:



Sun City Historical Voting Graph:



What does this data tell us?

Sun City is obviously pretty solidly Republican (Stating the obvious I know).

The +20% Voter REG edge is a killer here, regardless of 'Pub cross-over votes or heavy REG Indy swings towards the Dems.

Although there were marginal swings at the Presidential Election level between '12 and '16, most of this was a defection from the Pubs towards 3rd Party Voters, and there was only a 0.4% gain for the Dem '16 nominee.

Even in the '16 Sheriff election Sun City voted +16% for "Joe", despite the legal clouds and corruption charges racking up against him.

I posited a few pages back on this thread before the election, that if a Dem were going to make CD-08 a horse-race election, they would need to approach the '14 levels of support for a Democrat achieved by the candidate running for the Arizona Superintendent of Education race...

We saw that happen last week where the 'Pub only won Sun City by slightly less than 10%....

Sun City West Chart:



Sun City West Graph:



What does this data tell us?

Sun City West is even more Republican than Sun City, which kinda makes sense since Sun City first originated in 1960 and Sun City West sometime in the late '70s....

Over 50% of the EV here was cast by REG 'Pubs, and Dems only hit 40% of the Vote once here, during the '14 AZ Sup of Ed race.

We saw a lower increase in the DEM EV Vote Share than in Sun City, and higher IND EV vote share, and 'Pubs still only won by +14% and well outperformed their record 40.3% number from '14, achieving a remarkable 42.9% of the vote here.

Republicans are used to winning Sun City West by roughly 2:1 margins every election....

Let's look at results from the other planned retirement communities in CD-08:

This gets a bit trickier without delving extensively into Census Data, but fortunately for the purpose of this exercise, it's really easy to pinpoint those precincts that are exclusively "Senior Only" communities simply by looking at Turnout levels in off-year elections, and then pulling up the Census Data and finding out whoah  95% of the population is 55+ (etc....).

So here are the precincts that I included in the list of Senior Planned Retirement Communities...

Now a couple of these are obvious, such as Saddle Ridge which is split between Sun City and Peoria, although I didn't code it as "Sun City" and Kodiak split between Sun City West and Surprise.



Here is the chart for the "Other Planned Senior Retirement Precincts"



Here is a graph for the "Other Planned Senior Retirement Precincts:



So what does any of this tell us here?

The "Other" Senior Precincts category shows many similarities with Sun City West, except it has even a lower % of Registered Democrats (21.3%), slightly lower % of Registered Republicans, and a higher % of Registered Indies....

Again, we see a record level of support for a Democratic Candidate, even compared against the 2016 AZ-Sheriff race, and 2014 AZ-Sup of Ed Race....

Final thoughts:

1.) Anglo Senior Citizens in CD-08 swung hard Democrat in a national election, as opposed to relatively more localized elections (Maricopa County Sheriff '16, and AZ-Sup of Ed '14).

2.) Not only did AZ Anglo Seniors swing hard DEM on 4/24/18, but Democrats exceeded the highest benchmarks to date of a Democratic candidate among this population, with '16 Sheriff being a potential outlier because of Sheriff Joe's baggage and '14 AZ Sup of Ed being much more localized affair.

3.) The level of elasticity among the Anglo Senior population of the district exhibited by the Special Election is a bit mind boggling looking at historical election results, and part of the reason why I was generally skeptical about this being anything like PA-18.

4.) The thing that really has Senior 'Pub strategists, AZ 'Pub political leaders, crapping bricks is that this collapse of support happened among what was supposed to be one of their three core legs of the Arizona Republican Party.

In Non-Presidential Election Years (Where most of the Statewide races occur), turnout tends to be much lower among potentially Democratic leaning base voters....

Anglo Seniors account for a disproportionate share of the electorate during those off-year elections and they vote regularly....

Although there appears to be a "Crisis of Confidence" among these Anglo Seniors with the overall direction the Republican Party is taking, it still remains to be seen to what extent this will manifest in the upcoming Arizona Statewide Election contests.

Still, these numbers do not appear good for the Republican Candidate running for Flake's Senate seat in November, and it's entirely plausible that we will see some interesting numbers from similar type precincts come November '18 for the AZ-GOV race not to mention various AZ-LD SEN seats that Dems need to flip in November to take control of the AZ State Senate...

[NOVA Green]

Ok--- let's look at the overall 75% of the electorate in the Special Election that doesn't live in Senior Only Precincts, not that there aren't Seniors living throughout these places....

Here the total numbers thus far break down roughly 67k D (48.7%)- 70.2k R (51.0%)....

Let's start with the places where there was roughly a 25% Democratic Swing between the 2016 Presidential Election and the 2018 Special Congressional Election....

These communities represented roughly 11.2% of the CD-08 Vote in 2018 vs 12.9% in the '16 Pres Election, and 11.6% in the '14 GE....

Here is the raw precinct swing chart....



Now we look at how these precincts voted from '12 to '16....



So again, you have places with roughly a 2:1 Registered Republican Voting Edge, that voted +5% for Sheriff Joe, where typically Republicans will usually win by somewhere in the +30% Margin range, that actually voted to elect a Democrat to represent them in the US House....

Even the Early Vote breakdown disproportionately favors Republicans, where the vast majority of the ballots were cast early.

If we look at the 2014 GE numbers the total raw vote from these precincts was roughly equal to that of the 2018 Special Election....

One could perhaps make an argument that there was a bit of Republican and Republican-Leaning Indy disillusionment in these places, and as I mentioned before the election I was starting to notice a slight bit of turnout gap in the Dem's favor in these types of precincts based on EV numbers.....

Now Turnout gap is obviously not an issue when your electorate is looking +20 % R vs D, and Indies aren't really showing up as much in an off-year election....

There were a ton of "flip voters" in these precincts who voted Trump/Romney, and even some who voted for Sheriff Joe....

Now where are these precincts located?



I'm missing a few in the far Northern part of the CD.... Majesty and Westwing, as well as one in the far Southwest part of the District.... Litchfield because I couldn't snip the CD precinct map and still have the vast majority of precinct names present...

First thing that stands out is the geographical diversity of these massive swing precincts stretching from some of the far Northern Exurbs of Phoenix, to a couple precincts in Northwest Glendale, to some more Centrally located precincts in Peoria, down to the fast growing Exurbs of Surprise, and

So what do these precincts look like from a Social-Demographic perspective?

Let's start with a Median Household Income by Census Tract Map...



So here you a strong overlap between Highest Income populations and largest Democratic swings between the Presidential Election of 2016 and the Arizona 2018 Special Election....

Can't see the dark red precinct in the Southwest since it missed the snip is Litchfield Park, Arizona ("Old Money Republican")....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litchfield_Park,_Arizona

Now, let's look at the Ethnic population Map by Census Tract in CD-08...

Anglo-American Population:



Latino-American Population:



Asian-American Population:



So what we see here is that these heavy swing precincts are overwhelmingly Anglo in terms of population, and in many of these precincts have a significant Asian-American population, and with the exception of the SW Exurban around Surprise have a relatively low Latino-American population....

VAP numbers are likely significantly lower for the Latino-American population in most of these precincts....

Now, I can follow-up with the 20-25% swing precincts, and we will see the same pattern, although to a slightly lesser extent....

Arizona Republicans appear to have a major Anglo problem, and not just in the in the collapse of support that they saw among Reliably Republican Senior Citizens, but now among the Second Leg of the Arizona Republican coalition, Upper-Income Anglos....

Although this population votes less frequently than Seniors in off-year elections, they swung much harder Democratic than ever before in precincts that voted almost 2:1 Romney in 2012.....

Phoenix we have a problem....

[NOVA Green]

What about those precincts that swung heavily Democratic between the '16 Presidential Election and '18 CD-08 Special Election?

Here is a list of precincts that swung +20-25% Democratc, and represented roughly 20% of the CD'08 electorate in both 2014 and 2018, and 22% of the CD-08 electorate in 2016.... ( I omitted two "Senior Only" precincts since they were included in that previous breakdown)



Similarly to the +25% Democratic swing precincts, we see a wide geographical dispersion pattern, with Peoria, Glendale, Surprise, and Phoenix/ Uninc North Phoenix all represented.

Let's look at the maps of the District split into the Northern Part of CD- '08 and the numerically larger Central and Southern Part of the district.

Precincts highlighted in RED are +25% D swing '16 GE to '18, those in BLUE are +20-25% D Swing...

Northern CD-08:



Central/Southern CD-08:



Let's go back and look at the Median Household Income (MHI) by Census Tract Map...



So, I outlined three broad areas where MHI runs about $100k/Yr....

This includes broadly (Some Precincts highlighted in BOLD):

1.) Some Unincorporated Areas North of Phoenix (Majesty and Hastings)... Deadman Wash was split into two between '16 and '18, with a new precinct Tramonto created, so although this '16 precinct swung heavily Dem, I did not include on the map.

2.)Northern parts of Glendale/Peoria/Phoenix from Lake Pleasant in the NW going South-by-Southeast through West Wing, Desert Sage, to Creedence and stretching all the way down to Angela and heads back west towards Indian Wells....

3.) A significant cluster of precincts in more of the Central part of Glendale located within the district , and Peoria, essentially crunched between Sun City to the West and Phoenix to the East where you had roughly a dozen precincts that swung 20+% Dem between '16 and '18....

4.) You have that one pocket Litchfield in the SW Portion of CD-08 that I mentioned in my previous post regarding +25% D swing precincts....

5.) Now you have one major cluster of +20/+25 D Swing precincts that is not represented on the MHI Map with high concentrations of +100k/Yr Median Household Income....

These are in the rapidly growing Exurban city of Surprise, Arizona (+220% pop growth 2010 to 2018)...

MHI runs roughly more in the $67k/Yr range, the population tends to skew much younger than CD-08 in general somewhere in the early '40s, still tends to be heavily Anglo.

These types of areas will be especially interesting to watch in the General Election this November and in the 2020 GE as the Exurban share of CD- '08 continues to grow as first time home buyers move further and further out into newer housing developments in the desert and trade more house for lower cost and longer commutes....

Ok---- how what does the voting history of the +20-25% Dem Swing ('16 GE > '18 CD SE) look like?



What do these numbers show from 20-22% of the CD-'08 electorate?

1.) Again we have areas with an overwhelmingly Republican voting history that almost elected a Democrat in a Special Election....

The Registered Voter Numbers (24 D- 44 R- 32 I) tend to be closer to the RV numbers in CD-08 than the Senior Citizen Precincts and the +25% D Swing precincts....

2.) Once again there were gains on the margins for the '18 Dem candidate (48-51 R) compared to the '16 Sheriff numbers (47-53 R)....

3.) If we do a compare/contrast for the +25% Dem swing precincts vs the +20-25% Dem swing precincts, the +20-25% D Swing precincts actually tend to vote slightly more Democratic than the +25% Dem swing precincts, but in the Special Election that was not the case....

The obvious variance between the two is that Independents voted at a lower level in the +20% Swing Precincts in the '18 Special Election, AND the DEMs did slightly worse in reducing the EV DEM/REP voter gap in the former....

Without doing an exhaustive study comparing the +20% vs +25% Dem swing precincts, it appears that the turnout levels in the former was a bit more favorable to the Democrats than the latter, but regardless overall +20% swing precincts accounted for a whopping 30% of the AZ CD-08 SE vote.

Some of this might possibly be related to variations in age and education differentials on the margins, combined with a bit of statistical "noise", but regardless we can see that turnout differentials were slightly less worse for 'Pubs here than in the HUGE swing precincts....

Ok--- before I finish this, there are a few more items to examine....

Here is a chart that shows the precinct level results by Party for the '18 SE and '16 PRES and '16 Sheriff Election, as well as the Early Voting partisan gap compared to the PEVL (Pre-Approved Early Voting List) numbers....

This gives us an idea of to what extent the turnout enthusiasm gap may have played a role in the EV numbers, which were obviously an overwhelming majority of the votes cast in this election....



So on the Left side of the chart I randomly chose Blue for some reason rather than Red (Atlas faux pas) to code DEM/REP EV turnout gaps.... basically which Party was turning out a greater number of their base voters than the other, and essentially leaving the Indy vote to the sidelines....

What do these numbers tell us?

1.) Democrats overall were much better than Republicans in getting their Early Voters to turnout, despite the last minute RNC GOTV drive....

2.) Although generally the Democratic candidate in the Special Election outperformed the Democratic Candidate running for Maricopa County Sheriff against "Sheriff Joe", it is notable that there were a relatively small number of precincts where the Dem CD-08 candidate under-performed....

Earlier in the thread I had posited that since we didn't have any real example of a potential Democratic precinct level win model in this district, the best we could do for precinct modeling would be look that the '16 Sheriff Election, and to a lesser extent the '14 Arizona Superintendent of Education Election as potential narrow routes towards a Democratic WIN in this district.

3.) Interestingly enough we don't really see the PEVL gap being the major correlation between election results in CD-08 4/24....

It looks more like a mixture of improvement on Sheriff Joe election numbers for the DEM in certain precincts, combined with a larger collapse among Trump levels of support in many of these precincts even where the Lesko out-performed Sheriff Joe....

4.) The more I look at the data, it really is starting to look like the Democratic candidate won some 65% of Registered Independents that voted, as opposed to my "High-Dem" Model of 60-40 D....

I am still extremely skeptical about any polling numbers and discussions about how 15-17% of Registered Republicans voted Democrat in this election, since we really don't have any precinct data to indicate that by Party Registration....

What I *suspect* might be the case is that these polling questions asked about Party Identification and not Party Registration.

As all of us regular Atlas Election Geeks well know Registered Independents frequently tend to lean heavily one way or the other when it comes to their voting history....

*IF* Dem's are winning 2:1 among Registered Indies in a CD where typically Dems barely break 50-50 or 53-47, 'Pub Phoenix has a massive Anglo problem....

Gotta take a break from the project, but will need to check '12 > '16 GE PRES swings for these precincts at some point....

[NOVA Green]

Now let's shift gears and move towards the other side of the deck.... precincts where there was a '16 to '18 Dem Swing of less than 10%, and in a couple cases a reverse swing towards the Republican CD-08 candidate....

These precincts accounted for the vote share in CD-08:

Registered Voters: 9.9%
2018 Special Election: 7.1% of Total Vote
2016 General Election: 8.7% of CD-08 Total Vote
2014 General Election: 7.5% of Total Vote

Here's the list of precincts in CD '08 that had the lowest Democratic Swing between '16 PRES GE and '18 CD Special Election:



Here is how they voted in recent years (Filtered out Deadmanwash for reasons cited in my previous post)....



In theory these should be overwhelmingly Democratic Precincts compared to the RV numbers, Trump only narrowly won here (45-47 R), Sheriff Joe went down hard (56-44 D), the Dem Candidate for US SEN won in '12 (49-45 D), etc....

Reality is that in non-Presidential Year elections, these precincts start to become much more Republican as a result of turnout numbers among Registered Democrats and Indies....

Ok... here is the map of low Dem swing precincts in '18 compared to the '16 GE...



There a couple "Senior Only" precincts accidentally included in the final vote tally chart, Happy Trails, St Christopher and Lakeview (Sun City), that will move the numbers around a bit on the margins, but my fundamental point below still stands...

Let's look at the Latino Population of the District by US Census Tract...



So here we see the two precincts that swung Republican between '16 and '18 (Goodyear and San Miguel) both have fairly large Latino populations....

We also observe areas around the "Latino Belt" of CD-08 that runs South from Old Town Surprise down through El Mirage, and sweeps around to the SE portions of the district into "South Peoria" and into adjacent portions of Glendale....

El Mirage was featured in the seminal book: "The Patchwork Nation" published about eight years back as a key example of the "Immigration Nation" segment of Americana and voting habits...

http://www.patchworknation.org/Immigration-Nation



Although this district is not significantly Latino in terms of overall population, it is even much less so in terms of VAP and RVs, and Working-Class Latinos tend to vote less frequently in this part of the US in Non-Presidential Year elections....

Flake lost these precincts by + 1k Dem Total Votes in '12. the AZ Sup of Ed narrowly won by 100 Votes in 2014, Trump narrowly won these precincts by 450 votes in '16 (Inclusive of Senior Precincts), and Sheriff Joe lost by a huge 3.5k Votes in '16....

Hiral narrowly won these precincts by 500 votes in the Special Election, although voter turnout was only about 50% of 2016 numbers (Electorate much more Anglo and Middle-Class Latino and very few Working-Class Latino voters)...

Still, there are tons of places like this in Maricopa County, and with so many key elections on the line in Arizona in November 2018, the Special Election results from CD-08 thus far don't appear to indicate a massive Latino surge come November in Arizona...

This could easily change with extremely competitive US-SEN, AZ-GOV, races on the line not to mention pretty much all Statewide elections, and various Congressional Elections....

Still, despite the Republican Party's Maricopa County Anglo problem, the Democratic Party is facing an off-year election "Latino Problem" thus far when it comes to voter turnout and enthusiasm...

If Sheriff Joe is on the ballot as the Republican running in a GE to capture Flake's seat, this obviously won't be a problem, considering the massive Voter Registration Drives and grassroots organizing that happened in '16 against the racist a**hole.

Democrats can obviously win Arizona Statewide elections regardless of massive Latino turnout as results from CD-08 demonstrated in an off-year special election gig, but still votes are earned and not granted, AND without a significantly higher Latino turnout in the '18 AZ GE, numbers start to become much more complicated for Dems, regardless of whatever happens in the Nov '18 CD-08 rematch....

[NOVA Green]

Now that we have most of the Oregon Election results in for the 5/'15 Primary, time to take a brief look at the Macro Level data....

Let's start with the total population of Registered Voters by County in the last reporting period prior to the 2018 Oregon Primary....

Light Gray= Counties that account for 0.0% - 0.5% of the Total Registered Voters within Oregon
Dark Gray = Counties that account for 0.6 % to 1.0 % of the Total Registered Voters in Oregon
Other colors are shaded and identified as a % of the total Statewide Registered Voting Population.



So the three main Counties of Metro- Portland (Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas) account for roughly 43% of RVs within Oregon.

As I noted previously I do not consider Yamhill and Columbia Counties to be primarily Metro Portland, despite a few heavily exurban communities located on the fringes of Metro-PDX, because the predominant population in these counties do not consist of Metro-PDX commuters.

"Downstate Oregon" accounts for roughly 57% of the RVs within Oregon, and is essentially the reason why occasionally Oregon is still competitive for Statewide Elections, despite being overwhelmingly Democratic at the Federal Level....

Where are the respective Registered Democratic and Republican voting bases located at within Oregon?

Registered Democrats as % off total Party Vote Share by County:



Here we see that roughly 53% of Registered Democrats are located within the three counties of Metro Portland....

We see a couple decent chunks in Oregon's 2nd Congressional District (Jackson and Deschutes Counties), which account for about 9 % of Registered Dems in Oregon....

Mid Valley accounts for about 18 % of Registered Dems (Marion, Linn, Benton, Yamhill, and Polk....

Lane County (Eugene-Springfield) alone accounts for 9.4% of Registered Democrats, which forms the rump of OR CD-04, while Southwest Oregon (Douglas, Coos, Curry, and Josephine) account for only about 8% of Registered Democrats collectively....

Registered Republicans as % of Total Vote Share by County:



So here we see how truly marginalized the state of the current Oregon Republican Party is...

1.) About 32.7% of Registered Republicans reside in the three Counties of Metro Portland....

2.) About 21% reside in the Mid-Willamette Valley Counties, which used to be the traditional "swing district" part of Oregon and heavily located in CD-05, with the Cities of Albany and Corvallis carved into CD-04 after redistricting in 2010 to balance out the population growth from Metro-Portland and Mid-Valley to add additional population into OR CD-04....

3.) Lane County give the 'Pubs 8.5% of their total RV Share, heavily concentrated in rural and small town parts of the County, not to mention a decent chunk of voters from Metro Eugene-Springfield.

4.) SW Oregon accounts for close to 10% of the total 'Pub Vote Share in Oregon, thanks to the Oregon Republican Party swapping the 'Burbs of Portland in an attempt to make to play for Timber Country during the "Jobs vs Environment" BS angle from the 1990s....

5.) Jackson and Deschutes Counties alone account for close to 13% of the RV Republican Vote Share by County, which creates major issues for the Oregon Republican Party and brand considering these counties are increasingly trending a bit purple as a result of changing demographics and retirees from California and elsewhere relocating to these Counties that tend to be much more Liberal on Social and Environmental issues ....

The Oregon Republican Party is increasingly becoming a "rump party" dominated by an internal echo chamber making it extremely difficult to sell a comprehensive brand to a statewide audience, even for Statewide level elections, where they used to be competitive regardless of whatever was happening within the National political environment....

Oregon is a closed primary State--- Indies can't vote for any partisan primary.... So what happens when we look at the vote share by County by Party for the May 2018 Primaries?

Democratic Party Vote Share for Gubernatorial Election:



Oregon really didn't have very many competitive Democratic Party elections, so overall Democratic Primary turnout was a bit lower than average for an off-year election, so vote share distribution dropped a bit in Metro Portland and increased overall in most of "downstate Oregon"....

I used the Gubernatorial Democratic and Republican Primary numbers as a measurement to compare against overall RV numbers by party.

Where were the Democratic Primary Votes concentrated?....

1.) We see Metro-PDX drop to only 46.5% of Registered Democrats

2.) Mid-Valley 15.4% of Dem Primary Voters

3.) Lane County jumps to 11.8% of Dem Primary Voters

4.) SW Oregon roughly 6.0% of Dem Primary Voters

5.) Jackson/Deschutes bop up to about 10% of Dem Primary Voters

This is not bad news at all for Oregon Democrats, considering the majority of the targeted Oregon State Senate & House Districts targeted in Nov '18 for a Democratic Party "Super-Majority" in the State Legislature are in Downstate Oregon...

Where were the Republican Party Primary Voters located?



1.) Metro PDX--- Almost 26% of the 'Pub Vote located here....

Massive drop from the 33% of their RV Vote Share, which obviously creates some major questions and issues as to the future of the Republican Party for Statewide Elections, considering this is a part of the State, where even traditionally Republican leaning suburbs and exurbs are starting to skew heavily Democrat, well before Trump became the National standard bearer of the Republican Party.

2.) Mid-Valley--- About 21% of the 'Pub Vote located here...

Holds steady for Party Vote Share by Region

3.) Lane County-- 8.6 % 'Pub Vote Share by County

 Holds steady for Party Vote Share by Region

4.) SW Oregon--- 13% of the 'Pub Vote Share....

Here's a chunk of the Republican Vote Share caused by the drop-off from Metro PDX

5.) Jackson/Deschutes--- 13.7% of the 'Pub Vote Share....

Increased numbers for 'Pubs as a share of their total vote share in some relatively fast growing "Minor Metro" Areas...

6.) Lion Share of the 'Pub increased Primary Vote Share came from heavily rural and small town areas in Eastern Oregon, as well as some numbers from NW Coastal Oregon....

Much of this information might well be completely irrelevant if one attempts to look the Oregon Primary Election and attempt to model for November '18 results considering the extremely high number of registered Independents and 3rd Party Candidates in Oregon.

Current Oregon Voter registration numbers show Registration by Party as being roughly 36% Registered Democrat, 26 % Registered Republican, and 38% Registered Independent / Other.

Still a +260k Dem RV edge is nothing to sneeze at in a relatively low population State such as Oregon with 2.684k RVs, where AVR and VBM have massively increased voter registration as % of the VAP...

This is worthy of a completely separate post, since AVR is a completely new phenomenon and has caused a major collapse in both Democratic and Republican Party Registration in Oregon alike, since the default voter registration is NAV, and most new voters don't really bother to tinker about with their voter registration until their are some major partisan primaries going on, most likely to occur in 2020 as a PRES GE year...

Now to briefly discuss the Oregon Gubernatorial Primary Elections:

1.) Kate Brown as expected performed extremely well among Registered Democrats....

There are definitely some warning signs from both the Left and Right wings of the Democratic Party if we take a brief peek at some of the County level results....

From the "Right" DINO wing of the Democratic Party you have this Ed Jones Bloke:

https://www.edjonesforgovernor.com/platform

He basically ran on a Republican platform, but managed to bag a huge chunk of Democratic Primary voters.... (8.5 %)

He hit about 20% of Democratic Primary Voters in a wide variety of Counties in Oregon, including some major populated centers such as Douglas, Linn not to mention 15+% some smaller counties throughout the State from Baker, Columbia , Coos, Crook, Umatilla, etc...

Many of these Registered Democrats will typically vote Democrat for Federal Elections and sometimes Democrat for Statewide Elections, but are voting in protest against where they see the direction of their Party going at the statewide level on issues such as Gun Reform, LGBT Equality, decriminalization of hard drugs in Oregon, and some of the other statewide programs that Kate Brown has successfully passed into law in her brief two year term as Governor.

From the Left, we have Candace Neville, who I might have considered voting for had we not had the most Progressive Democratic Governor ever in Oregon History.

Candace still managed to capture 7.3% of the Oregon GOV PRIM vote, although we don't really see a major Geographical variance in her vote distribution, with the exception of over-performing in the most heavily rural counties in the State.

I strongly suspect that most of the Neville voters will fall in line in November, with some minor defections to the Green or Working Family Party candidates for OR-GOV.

2.) I don't really have a decent take on the mindset of Republican Primary voters that went for Carpenter or Woolridge, but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of the Trumpistas and Evangelical Fundi's will fall in line behind Buehler, despite their major issues with an "establishment 'Pub" nominee since the vast majority literally despite Kate Brown to a level that we rarely see towards Democratic Governors of Oregon....

More to come....

[NOVA Green]

Ok---- now that we've talked a bit and reviewed the data on relative DEM/REP Registered Voters by County and looked at the 2018 Primary DEM/REP Vote Share by County, time to take a look at the TWO Party May '18 RV numbers vs the May '18 OR-GOV numbers to do a compare and contrast, since even if Indies split 50-50 in the November GE, Dems hold a +16% lead over Pubs among Registered Voters, and a +12% lead over 'Pubs among Primary Democratic/Republican voters....

MAY 2018: Registered Voters as a % of combined TWO Party Votes (DEM/REP)



So right here, in theory, this map should be absolutely terrifying for Republicans, especially considering the DEM % of RVs dropped between '16 and '18, as many people switched from Registered NAV / 3rd Party in order to vote in the '16 DEM PRES Primaries, and switched their REG back to IND/OTHER.

I mean if hypothetically in a "Wave Election" Indies vote 60-40 Dem in Oregon in 2018, not only will we see Kate Brown win comfortably by mid double digits, but additionally the Oregon State Legislature will be Ironclad Democratic with a Super-Majority that overcomes many of the restrictions of revenue generation in the form of changing taxation policy in a direction where Big Business and extremely High Income individuals might have to cough up a few extra bucks to pay their fair share towards education, infrastructure, and social services....

Although OR CD-02 is not in play in 2018, I would not be surprised to see some significant swings in the two largest population centers within the district (Jackson and Deschutes Counties) where Republicans only narrowly hold a lead in terms of TWO Party voter registration.

Now, we do have some Ancestral Democratic voting populations in places like Coos, Tillamook, Columbia, and Wasco that obviously stand out, and I would argue that although the map obscures it Linn County as well to some extent....

OK--- What was the TWO PARTY OR breakdown for the May Primary look like by County?

I'll spare your eyeballs on this one and not code counties by color on this map, since the map that I used in MS Paint in previous posts hasn't worked as well as I would like....



So on the surface, again this map looks extremely positive for Democrats, especially considering that there extremely competitive Republican Primaries to challenge incumbent Democrats for a wide variety of races from OR-GOV, to OR-US-HOUSE, etc.... and on the Dem side we didn't have any real competitive primaries, other than a few races here and there for OR State SEN/HOUSE legislative districts to challenge incumbent 'Pubs....

Now what does the map look like if we take the May 2018 Two Party Margins among Registered DEMs/Pubs and contrast against the total May 2018 OR-GOV Primary Two Party numbers by County???



So we start to see an extremely interesting looking map, especially considering that there weren't really very many competitive Democratic Primaries in Oregon, compared to a huge number of competitive Republican Primary contests....

A few key items to note:

1.) Democratic Primary voters exceeded their Registered Voter numbers by +2.5% in the largest County and most reliable Democratic stronghold in Oregon.... Multnomah County

2.) We also see even more massive RV vs OR-GOV Two Party numbers in Benton and Clatsop Counties.

Although both are to various degrees Democratic strongholds. Clatsop County has a significant number of both retirees and Ancestral Democrats, along with a Regional Community College in Astoria. Benton County is heavily a University County, combined with a fairly educated population that works in the Tech Sector (HP), as well as massive regional Hospital that provides some of the highest quality Medical Services in Oregon outside of Metro Portland (OHSU)....

3.) Look carefully at the map along the Oregon Coast which is heavily retiree communities, and we see Dem margins doing extremely well, not only in the more Democratic Leaning retiree communities in the Oregon Coast, but even in more Republican leaning retiree communities along the Southern Oregon Coast (Coos County and Curry County)

4.) Obviously the +1.3% Dem margins in Lane County compared to RVs stands out as well, especially considering it is the major "anchor County" of OR-CD-04....

5.) Jackson County really stands out here (+0.8% Dem), considering that it increasingly looks like not only a "Flip County" but a "Flip Hard County" if the Oregon Republican Party AND the National Republican Party continues down their current trajectory....

Will need to further examine precinct level results here to see to what extent these changes are happening in Medford vs Rural Areas, and to what extent potentially high Dem turnout in Ashland and surrounding areas might be impacting these numbers.

6.) In the Portland Suburbs of Washington and Clackamas Counties we see some marginal 'Pub gains looking at RV numbers vs OR-GOV numbers by Party.

This is NOT an unexpected phenomemon considering the character and composition of the Democratic electorate in a non-competitive off-year Primary....

What is remarkable is how close these off-year primary numbers were compared to what we would normally expect historically speaking.

7.) We see significantly higher 'Pub RV vs GOV numbers in the Mid-Valley, which as I have stated before is the heartlands of the Evangelical Christian segment of the Republican electoral base.

Additionally, these same counties have some of the highest % of Latinos that are American Citizens compared to most parts of Oregon (Many Counties in Eastern Oregon have an extremely high % of Latinos that are "Guestworkers" in the farms, ranches, and agricultural processing plants in places from Umatilla to Malheur Counties).

Working-Class Latinos in Oregon tend to be more less likely to vote in off-year elections, just like in places like Texas and Arizona, especially when it comes to primary elections....

8.) SW-Oregon.... Josephine and Douglas Counties have long been the bedrock of Republican voters within Southern Oregon.... the former went for Goldwater in '64 and I don't believe has voted for a Democratic President since maybe once or twice for FDR...

There are no Timber mills left in Josephine County, in what used to be a major Timber Mill city in Oregon, where now "The Gut" a massive sprawling series of Mills has now been turned into shopping centers and discount food and apparel...

Grant's Pass accounts for a HUGE chunk of Total Voters within Josephine County and in the past few decades has transitioned from a Working-Class Republican Mill town to a retiree town.

Josephine County is probably the only place in Oregon where Democrats perform better in rural areas than the largest population center within the County.

Douglas County was ground zero in the Oregon "Timber Wars" of the late '80s to the present day...

It's a bit more of a Trip considering that it was only (47-53 R) in '88 and is now essentially the most Republican County in Oregon West of the Cascades.

There is still plenty of Timber to be logged, even without dipping into Old Growth in the National Forests of Douglas County....

There are still Timber Mills active in Roseburg, and other parts of the County, although the old Oregon Mantra goes: "Douglas County is where they harvest the Timber, and Lane County is where they Mill the Timber"

Still, this is a County where unemployment rates spike through the roof every time there is a National Recession and collapses of the Housing Market....

Can't remember offhand the exact numbers, but during the Bush Jr recession, thinking the unemployment rate spiked at something like 17% in '09....

9.) Deschutes County numbers look good for 'Pubs.... Turned out in high numbers to vote for the ("Moderate 'Pub) as opposed to the 'Fundi or the Trumpista candidate for OR-GOV.

10.) In the heavily Latino portions of Eastern Oregon (Morrow and Umatilla Counties) we see some of the greatest increases for the 'Pubs compared to the RV numbers for the Primary Election...

One could likely make an argument that Crook and Jefferson Counties were similarly impacted by low voter turnout among Latinos/ Native Americans...

More to come.....

[NOVA Green]

There is a lot of subtlety when it comes to looking at the issue of "Culturally Liberal" versus "Socially Liberal" attitudes, without even addressing the "Rural Areas" question....

Let's start with the question of what does it mean to be Culturally Liberal?

If we look at the limited Wikipedia Definition we see the following:

"Cultural liberalism is a liberal view of society that stresses the freedom of individuals from cultural norms and in the words of Thoreau is often expressed as the right to "march to the beat of a different drummer".[1]"

Cultural liberals believe that society should not impose any specific code of behavior and they see themselves as defending the moral rights of nonconformists to express their own identity however they see fit, as long as they do not harm anyone.[dubious – discuss] The culture wars in politics are generally disagreements between cultural liberals and cultural conservatives, as cultural liberals are strongly opposed to censorship or any kind of oversight of spoken or written material.[2] They believe that the structure of one's family and the nature of marriage should be left up to individual decision and they argue that as long as one does no harm no lifestyle is inherently better than any other. Because cultural liberalism expresses the social dimension of liberalism, it is often referred to as "social liberalism", but is not the same as the political ideology known as social liberalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_liberalism

This definition is so broad that it would likely include large swathes of rural America since there is inherently a Libertarian component when it comes to fundamental items such as Freedom of Speech and the Individual versus attempts to restrict those existing rights.

Social Liberalism

Under social liberalism, the good of the community is viewed as harmonious with the freedom of the individual.[6] Social liberal policies have been widely adopted in much of the capitalist world, particularly following World War II.[7] Social liberal ideas and parties tend to be considered centrist or centre-left.[8][9][10][11][12] Social liberals see themselves as occupying the middle ground between social democrats and classical liberals.

"The term "social liberalism" is used to differentiate it from classical liberalism, which dominated political and economic thought for a number of years until social liberalism branched off from it around the Great Depression. In American political usage, the term "social liberalism" describes progressive stances on socio-political issues like abortion, same-sex marriage or gun control as opposed to "social conservatism". A social liberal in this sense may hold either "liberal" or "conservative" views on fiscal policy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

Although these definitions are sourced from Wikipedia, rather than any Political Science Journal focusing on Political Philosophy within the context of American Politics, it provides us with a starting foundation to at least address the question properly....

If we move to the definitions of "Rural" at least we have a commonly accepted means to discuss the data based upon US Census Definitions....

if we use the Census Bureau definitions of "rural" as I posted on another thread regarding "rural White Majority Counties won by HRC"....

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=292631.msg6219390#msg6219390



Now it get's trickier if we use the Census Definition of "rural" areas more narrowly, since this involves precinct level analysis and/or assumptions about the distribution of the "rural" population compared to whatever larger population centers exists within a given county:

According to the current delineation, released in 2012 and based on the 2010 decennial census, rural areas comprise open country and settlements with fewer than 2,500 residents.

Whew--- now where do we have at least some data points to examine issues relating to Abortion, LGBTQ Equality, Guns, Freedom of Speech, and Marijuana?

Well, we do have a decent amount of data from Oregon since ALL of these issues, (Plus many more) have popped up on the ballot as part of Oregon's direct democracy Citizen Initiative process (Although many of these were sponsored by the Oregon Citizen's Alliance from the late '80s to the Mid '00s....

Let's start with Freedom of Speech:

1996: Oregon GE Ballot Measure #31: Removes State Protections for Obscenity



So here we see even traditionally heavily Republican parts of Eastern and Southern Oregon reject the attempt to modify the Oregon State Constitution that would have made it much easier to "Ban Smut"....

What's really interesting about this map is that it was rejected by decent margins in Eastern and Southern Oregon, but still passed in most Counties within the Mid-Willamette Valley....

It's also notable that among several of the Counties on the Oregon Coast with the highest proportion of Seniors (Curry, Lincoln, and Tillamook) the race was much closer regardless of the variance in partisan affiliation....

The Counties with the largest support for the "Smut Ban" were the suburban Portland Counties of Washington and Clackamas, and even in the more heavily Mormon and "Cowboy Country" areas of SE and NE Oregon, this measure was rejected everywhere except for Malheur County....

2000 GE: Remove Protections for Adult Businesses from Oregon Constitution



This was basically an attempt to shut down strip clubs, adult bookstores, and even potentially LGBTQ businesses under the guise of giving power to individual units of Government (In places like Portland there are neighborhood associations that essentially control many zoning related decisions)...

Although this initiative was a bit closer in many parts of rural Oregon than the attempt to "Ban Smut" (Much of Eastern and Southern Oregon doesn't really have much in the way of Strip Clubs or Adult Bookstores), it still narrowly won in the "Bible Belt" of Oregon in the Mid-Valley although it still performed slightly worse in the Suburbs of Portland...

Coastal Oregon is interesting here in that the '96 "Banning of Smut" was closer than the attempt to ban strip clubs and adult bookstores...

Abortion:

1990 GE: Ban on Abortions with Three Exceptions....



So here we see how overwhelmingly Pro-Choice Oregon is, even in heavily rural parts of the State....

Key things to note here is that there were only two Counties in Oregon that voted over 40% to "Ban Abortion" (Linn and Malheur)....

The next biggest chunk of Anti-Choice Counties would be in "Bible Belt" of the Mid-Willamette Valley (Marion, Polk, Yamhill) and Douglas and Josephine Counties in Southern Oregon...

One could certainly make a decent argument that being Pro-Choice is Culturally Liberal vs Socially Liberal.

1990 GE: Requires Parental Notification for Minors Receiving Abortions



So here we see a potential gap between Social and Cultural Liberalism, with many Oregonians in both Rural areas and Cities saying "Yes we are Pro-Choice, BUT Parents should be notified 72 Hours in Advance if their Teenage kids are scheduled to have an Abortion procedure"....

There was essentially a similar measure on the ballot in '06, (Although it required 48 Hour Notification) and most of the Counties in Oregon had essentially minor variances from the '90 results....



What do we see here???

An Uptick of support for Parental Notification in much of Eastern and Central Oregon, with Southern Oregon holding steady, and an increase of support for a more "Socially Liberal" gig in the Counties of the Mid and Upper Coastal Rural parts of the State....

Not even going into the Portland suburbs and MultCo which are really where the major swings happened between '90 and '06 on this question...

GUNS:

Oregon has only really had one direct democracy initiative directly addressing Guns and it was way back in 2000, but still it gives us an idea regarding social/cultural Liberalism when it comes to something as basic such as closing the "Gun Show Loophole"



So this map is pretty fascinating.... as one might expect much of Eastern and Southeastern Oregon voted against closing the "Gun Show Loophole".... Still once we get outside of Ranching Country we see Umatilla County voting 45% YES...

When we move to Southern Oregon we see some interesting results from Josephine County, and Jackson County votes (58-42 YES)...

Rolling up into the Mid-Willamette Valley, we see only Linn County voting against, and overwhelming support in favor in Marion/Polk....

Mid and Northern Coastal Oregon votes heavily in favor, with the exception of Columbia County (Think WWC Deer Hunter Country)

LGBTQ Equality:

1992: Ballot Measure # 9: "Government Must Discourage Homosexuality"



Again, we see the Libertarian element at play in much of Eastern Oregon, even in some extremely heavily Republican parts of the State....

Looking at Southern Oregon, we see that the Coastal Counties (Coos and Curry) weren't too crazy about that, although it did narrowly pass in Jackson County, and perhaps as expected Josephine and Douglas Counties by large margins....

Again we see the "Grain Belt" of the Columbia River Gorge not being too crazy about all of this....

The "Bible Belt" of the Mid Valley tends to be a bit more split (Marion, Polk, Yamhill), and Linn County once again shames us all....

Columbia County obviously stands out here considering that it voted to the Right of Coos County, both of which have long time been "Ancestral Democratic" Counties, where Columbia just flipped for the first time from a Democratic Candidate in a Presidential Election since the New Deal era....

2000: Ballot Measure # 9: "Prohibits Schools from Promoting Homosexuality"



The slippery slimy weasels of the Oregon Citizens Alliance try it again, but this time doing their shtick about how they are trying to "protect the kids" from a Homosexual Agenda...

It performed much better at the Ballot Box than their '92 Measure.... Still it should be noted that many "rural" parts of Coastal Oregon rejected this Measure, as well as lackluster support in much of the Columbia River Gorge....

2004: Ballot Measure #36 Constitutional Amendment- "One Man One Woman"



Although arguably SSM was way ahead of its time in '04, this was yet another attempt by the Religious Right to spark turnout in a Presidential General Election Year in Oregon to spike Evangelical Voter turnout in what some 'Pubs thought might be a "Swing State" at the time....

Only two Counties in Oregon voted against a hypothetical Marriage Equality scenario (Multnomah and Benton)....

Still, looking at Rural Counties in Oregon, numbers from Lincoln, Clatsop, and Hood River, were actually fairly close....

Obviously SSM has seen one of the biggest changes overall when it comes to public support of any social issue, other than perhaps Marijuana Legalization, so we can't view Cultural/Social Liberalism on LGBTQ Equality alone from "Rural Counties" in Oregon from an election in '04....

I could pull up some various County maps from Oregon for Marijuana related policy issues, but had something floating around from the '14 Legalization Ballot Measure in Oregon.

Honestly I don't recall my exact color coding scheme (Although I rarely smoke the stuff myself except for maybe 3-4 times a year on a special occasion), but I'm assuming that Green means GO and RED means NO, YELLOW means NO but only SLOW, etc....



So again, the "Bible Belt" of the Mid-Valley votes Slow but NO, Green Lights from Southern Oregon, except SLOW from Josephine and NO from Douglas (Which is fascinating considering it for a long time has been one of the top 10 outdoor Marijuana Growing Counties in the US, going way back to the days of the decline of the Timber Industry)....

One could certainly make a decent argument that there many rural parts of Oregon that are Culturally Liberal, but not Socially Liberal....

Even there, in many parts of rural Oregon we see strong support for freedom of speech against attempts to overturn Oregon Constitutional Protections against Nude Dancing and Pornography, strong support for Female Reproductive Rights, even in many places including the Rights of Medical Privacy for Teenagers, in favor of closing the "Gun Show Loophole", Legalization of Medical/Recreation Marijuana, AND even although LGBTQ Equality didn't perform especially well at the Ballot Box in Oregon between '88 and '04, it's still pretty clear that there was a significant amount of support even in many Rural areas of Oregon against the attempts to destroy equal protections for the Community....

Cultural Liberalism/ Social Liberalism....

Now to the OP's question, my thought is where it comes to WWC Rural areas swinging against Trump, we would most likely see that in Coastal Oregon, the Columbia River Gorge, as well as perhaps certain parts of Southern Oregon and Central Oregon....

Honestly IDK about Trump in Eastern Oregon and SouthEastern Oregon in 2020, but potentially although these are not places I would consider "Socially Liberal" these might well be places more elastic than many other parts of "Rural Oregon" considering how poorly HRC performed compared to the performance of any other Democratic Presidential Candidate at any time in recent political history....

[NOVA Green]

Although I do see Maricopa County, and with it Arizona likely flipping in 2020 with Trump at the top of the Republican ticket, I'm not convinced that this will necessarily be a permanent  phenomenon turning Maricopa County into some type of Democratic stronghold....

There are some structural advantages that both Democrats and Republicans have in respective parts of the County that indicate it will if anything tend to remain more of a "Purple" County over the next few Presidential Election cycles, although if it breaks hard Democrat in 2018 and 2020 there is a good chance that many of those Republican leaning Indies are gone for good...

Here are a few charts and graphs that I came up with last November for Maricopa County...

Where are the votes located at within Maricopa County?



We see that Phoenix accounts for about 33% of the total votes in '16 (Which was basically unchanged from '12 > '16), and a number of medium sized cities accounting for about 57% of the County Vote, and roughly 10% of the votes coming from Unincorporated, and to a much lesser extent rural areas.

CITY   2016 % of Cty Vote Share
PHOENIX   32.9%
MESA   11.8%
CHANDLER   7.0%
GLENDALE   5.0%
SCOTTSDALE   8.0%
GILBERT   6.9%
TEMPE   4.1%
PEORIA   5.0%
SURPRISE   3.5%
AVONDALE   1.5%
GOODYEAR   2.3%
BUCKEYE   1.7%
Non Top 12   10.3%

How did these places vote in the 2012 and 2016 Presidential Election?





So several things stand out here...

1.) Phoenix is starting to move in the direction of being a solidly Democratic City, as opposed to being a marginally Democratic City, and accounted for a huge chunk of the '12 > '16 Dem vote gains within Maricopa County from + 27.5k D in '12 to + 75.0k D in '16.

Although the margin swing was lower than in many other communities in Maricopa County, the sheer size of the Phoenix vote share more than made up for those numbers.

Now it should be noted that many of the places within Phoenix that saw the largest '12 > '16 Dem swings were in relatively affluent Anglo and Republican leaning precincts within the City, so despite the '16 "Latino Surge" in some of the more heavily working and middle class neighborhoods within the City, even if we see a comparable surge in 2020, as well as the addition of a number of younger Democratic leaning voters showing up to vote for the first time with the simplicity of a heavily Vote-by-Mail (VbM) electorate, that is clearly not sufficient alone to maintain a +15% D vote margin   
(54-39 D) that we saw in 2016.

2.) Mesa is still a solidly large Republican vote basket accounting for a +40k R 'Pub lead in 2012 and +30k R lead in 2016.

Although Trump performed significantly worse than Romney, it still went almost +17% R, with almost all of the 'Pub drop-off going to 3rd Party candidates. Not that there weren't some Romney > HRC voters here, but one would certainly imagine that 'Pubs would be the net beneficiaries in this City if 3rd Party voting craters in 2020 and beyond.

3.) Chandler appears that it is starting to move heavily in a Democratic direction, and I suspect that trend will continue into 2020 with Trump leading the Republican brand.

Still again, much of the movement here was from upper middle-class voters in a relatively diverse and educated suburb of Phoenix, so will that trend hold in the Post-Trump era or will some of these voters return if the Republican Party sheds some of the extremist rhetoric that alienates these types of voters?

4.) Glendale did not swing nearly as heavily Democratic between '12 and '16, mainly because there was a smaller drop-off of Republican vote percentages compared to Chandler.

Still, Dem's managed to gain votes compared to '12 and we do have an additional data point in the form of the 2018 AZ-CD 08 Special Election, which I posted extensive a detailed analyses of that many of you read on another thread.

The portion of Glendale located within CD '08 was essentially the heavily Republican part of the City and we saw a massive Democratic swing in the '18 Special Election compared to the '16 Presidential Election....

Here's a link to a few posts that I made regarding the election results from CD-'08 that go into quite a bit of precinct results  and demographic details on Glendale, as well as Peoria, Surprise, etc...

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=288717.msg6183143#msg6183143

While one needs to be extremely cautious using data from a Special US House Election to extrapolate Presidential voting intentions into 2020, it is hard not to view this election as in many ways a referendum on the Trump Presidency, and when you see a +12.5% '16 Trump part of the City flip heavily Democratic in early '18 and then throw in the already heavily Democratic precincts NOT located within CD-'08 the trends start to look extremely bad for Republicans.

It should also be noted that most of the 20-25% Dem swing '16 PRES to '18 House Special election precincts within Glendale happened in overwhelmingly Anglo Upper-income Educated/Professional precincts.

Will these voters feel differently in November 2020 assessing the Trump Administration, looking at their tax bill, etc

5.) Scottsdale saw the largest Democratic swings in Maricopa between '12 and '16 with a +14.5% Dem swing and a net gain of +5.2% to the Dem vote share (From 60-38 R in '12 to 51-43 R in '16).

Have Dems maxed out their votes in Scottsdale or is there more room to expand?

There were relatively few 3rd Party votes here, compared to most other places in Maricopa County and even if we were to chop the 3rd Party vote by overall city percentages, it's difficult to see 'Pubs really gaining any significant raw vote margins compared to '16.

I haven't pulled the '08 PRES numbers for Maricopa, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were a decent number of Obama '08 > Romney '12 > HRC '16 voters in Scottsdale which tends to skew much older, Anglo, Educated, and Upper-Middle Class retirees contrasted against places like Sun City and Sun City West.

The Anglo retirees in Scottsdale appear to be much swingier and elastic than in some other parts of Maricopa County and we don't have any real election data to see how these voters are responding to the Republicans attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act, which has become increasingly popular, especially among older voters.

6.) Gilbert is another Republican vote basket similar to Mesa, but even more Republican. There were larger swings here than in Mesa, not to mention a +1.9% increase of the Dem vote percentage between '12 and '16, but yet my gut says similar to Mesa a decrease in 3rd Party voting in 2020 would likely benefit the 'Pub nominee (Trump)....

Still, Gilbert skews more Middle-Aged than Senior, the Household Income remains high, but the Educational attainment level is pretty high for Metro Phoenix (#13 % overall for Bachelor degrees) so it's entirely possible that some of the Obama '08 > Romney '12 > Johnson '16 voters might break Dem in '20 without HRC at the top of Dem ticket and cut into Trump '20 raw vote margins and maybe shave another ~ 5k off the top of ticket race....

Wild Card???

7.) Tempe is a City where there is no place to go but up with Trump running as the 'Pub nominee in '20....

Tempe is the most Democratic City in Maricopa County of the largest 12 Cities voting for Obama '12 (56-41 D) and HRC (58-33 D).

Home Arizona State University (ASU) it's pretty safe to say that a large chunk of 3rd Party voters here would likely vote Democrat for President in 2020 without HRC at the top of ticket rather than a protest vote for Johnson or Stein or Bernie write-in.

It's entirely feasible to see a Dem Pres candidate in 2020 gaining a net +5k D vote margin, even with Trump maintaining 33-35% of the Total Vote.

8.) Peoria has long been a Republican stronghold with relatively minor changes in PRES % numbers between '12 and '16 and an almost +20k R raw vote margin in both elections.

Will the 2020 Pres numbers be closer to '12 and '16 % numbers or closer to the '16 "Sheriff Joe" referendum and the '18 House Special Election, roughly +4-5% R in both races?

As I posted shortly before the AZ CD-08 2018 Special Election: "How Will it Play in Peoria?"

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=288717.msg6145557#msg6145557

Peoria, Arizona is a bellwether city within AZ CD-'08 when it comes to overall voting margins, and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it is an important place to test the relative elasticity of Republican leaning Indies within Maricopa County at large.

Although a Democratic Pres candidate doesn't need to win or come close to winning Peoria, in order for a Dem to win Maricopa they need to keep 'Pub margins to no more than + 20% R.

9.) Surprise a fast growing exurban City in the far Northwestern corner of CD-08 was the real surprise of the 2018 Special House election.

Although it was the least elastic largest City within Maricopa County (+0.5% D '12 > '16), and the most Republican City in the 2016 Pres Election (59-34 R), we saw some of the largest swings here between '16 GE PRES and '18 SE House....

Fast growing Exurban parts of Maricopa like Surprise and Buckeye are likely to continue to be extremely politically volatile over the next decade, and will likely determine the political trajectory of Maricopa County and indirectly Arizona well into the 2020s....

10.) Non Top 12 Cities in Maricopa County aka everything else accounts for 10% of the County Vote Share....

This includes a wide range of unincorporated areas, smaller communities, and even a few rural areas.

Obviously these places deserve a much more detailed analysis, since alone they accounted for raw +40k R vote margins in '16, +42k R raw vote margins in '12....

These places include the heavily Republican retiree communities of Sun City and Sun City West (See AZ CD '08 results) but also include Native American reservations, heavily Latino precincts of places like El Mirage where HRC wasn't especially popular especially after some of the Obama Anti-Immigration policies that caused him to be labeled the "Deporter in Chief" among many Spanish speaking communities, as well as extremely wealthy Uninc areas throughout Metro Maricopa, and then throw in some overwhelmingly rural precincts....

How do Republicans keep winning Maricopa County Arizona at a Presidential Level?

It's actually really easy...

1.) Let go of the culture war issues such as scapegoating Latinos and Ethnic and Religious Minorities. Not only does this make it much more difficult for the 'Pub brand among Minority voters in Maricopa, it also alienates a ton of educated and Middle-Class Anglo voters as well.

2.) Demonstrate that Republicans can run as a Moderate Center-Right Party of Government as opposed to tying to destroy funding for Government services such as Education, Entitlement Programs, Health Care, and Transportation.

3.) Change the focus from the negativity such as Trump's '16 Pres election campaign designed to appeal to WWCs in Northern States where job losses have continued to accrue as a result of Democratic/Republican Administration Free Trade policies alike over the past 30 years, to a more positive approach.

Arizona is a Sunbelt State and people tend to prefer optimism to pessimism in the Sunshine State....

Democratic and Republican politicians alike run campaign ads about gritty Northern Factory Towns and Cities where all hope is gone because the "Plant closed Down"....

That's not how voters in Maricopa County perceive their State and communities....

Metro Phoenix took a huge hit at the time of the Great Recession, as did Metro Las Vegas....

Not only did homeowners property values collapse, but all new home construction froze, and tons of skilled construction workers left and disappeared for good to retire, seek alternative employment, and in many cases go back to Mexico after 15-20 Years of living and working in the United States....

Now it is "Morning in Arizona" and Trump will need to contest this State hard to avoid losing and try to take something out of the Ronald Reagan playbook "Morning in America" campaign commercial where the official title was "Prouder, Stronger, Better"...

Link to the official Reagan '84 Campaign commercial from the Ronald Reagan Library....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn9fR_-X9uw

[NOVA Green]

Now that we are rolling into Special Election Season in OH US-REP CD-12 let's take a brief look at a few relevant items....

Let's start with the vote share by County within OH CD-12 Precincts....



So basically the concept of vote share over three election cycles using the topline election (US_PRES '16, OH-GOV '14, US PRES '12) is to be able to adjust data to control for voter turnout differentials as well as population growth rates within a given CD....

Basically, what we see here is that Franklin and Delaware County collectively account for ~ 60% of the Vote Share within the CD, and have essentially been a growing segment of the electorate between '12 and '16....

Licking County has been a consistent ~ 20% of OH CD-12 Vote Share, and obviously will be a major contributor to any CD-12 Special Election Results in August 2018....

The other Four Counties precincts located within CD-12 ('12 > '18 account for the remaing 20% of the Vote Share---- (Marion, Morrow, Muskigum,  and Richland).

Now let's take a peak at the 2012 to 2016 US PRES vote swings by County within CD-12.



So here we see a dramatic increase in Democratic support within the Franklin County portion of CD-12, as well as to a lesser extent within Delaware County, but also some major swings towards Trump in other Counties within the precincts of CD-12....

Now let's look at the raw Total Vote DEM-REP Margin Changes between 2012 and 2016 for US PRES by County...



So here we start to see the raw power of massive swings among the heavily Upper-Income Anglo precincts of Franklin County between '12 and '16....

Honestly, I don't think the 'Pubs have yet hit rock bottom within these Franklin County precincts, but my suspicion is that O'Connor will likely outperform HRC, despite the "Trump Tax Cuts that nobody really experiences in the actual deductions on their Paychecks....

DEMS win '16 US-PRES in Franklin County precincts +36k and +22% Swings even excluding 3rd Party Votes....

Delaware County is obviously Ground Zero.... DEMS don't need to necessarily win Delaware County in CD-12 OH SE results, but just keep the PUB Margins as both % and RAW VOTE down to something more like ~ +7-10k R.... a 54-46 R win in Delaware County might be sufficient for a DEM win in CD-12...

Licking County and Muskigum County are a real test of if a LIB DEM can regain Obama '12 voters that defected to Trump....  Obama narrowly won Muskigum precincts with OH CD-12, and in Licking managed to bag a 42-56 R loss to Romney in '12....

I haven't had a chance to run all of these precinct numbers that I have for OH from '04 > '16, but to me it's starting to look like a potential combo scene between the relatively solidly Republican suburbs of South Pittsburgh moving hard Dem (Delaware County maybe less so???), but with a dramatically growing Dem base within the Franklin County portions of OH CD-12, where you really didn't have any comparison within PA-18 other than one township in South Allegheny (Mt Lebanon) that essentially swung dramatically DEM from '12 to '16 similar to the Franklin County precincts of OH CD-12....

What you did have in PA CD-18 were Ancestral DEMs in the SW portion of the County that although Lamb narrowly lost, he was able to replicate Obama '08 numbers in Fayette and Washington Counties....

At this point we have no real evidence whatsoever that Obama '12 (Or Obama '08 DEMs) will come home for a US House election in Licking and Richland Counties....

I'll continue to run the precinct level numbers, but Trump did have major swings in the Rural and Small Town WWC precincts here, which despite the dramatic swings towards HRC in Franklin, and to a lesser extent Delaware, still makes this a jump ball...

I'll run some more stats later, as I have done with PA-18, AZ-08, AL-SEN and mix in more data that overlaps with US CENSUS Stats in greater detail by Municipality and Township within CD-12....

[NOVA Green]

Franklin County is where the Democratic Candidate for OH CD-12 needs to win big in the Special Election in two weeks, or in the General Election this November, if Democrats are going to flip this US House District....

Let's take a more microscopic level of detailed analysis of the Franklin County precincts that account for roughly 33% of the CD vote in an average General Election.

Let's start with the Vote Share by municipality within Franklin County....



So here we see that the City of Columbus accounts in general for slightly less than 50% of the CD-12 vote Share within Franklin County, within a Presidential Election Year....

What happened in 2014 when it comes to the distribution of vote-share by place within Franklin Co CD-12 precincts???



Here is the same data from 2012....



OK--- to what extent does this really make a huge difference when it comes to the overall vote numbers in CD-12 precincts within Franklin County???

Obviously the only way that Democrats can win this special election in OH CD-12 is to rack up massive numbers within Franklin County, especially within precincts most favorably disposed to voting for a Democratic Candidate for a Federal Election....

In many ways very similar to the Southern Pittsburgh suburbs of South Allegheny County, even the most Democratic Precincts in recent years within Franklin County are relatively new converts to the Democratic Party, and tend to vote heavily Republican in most elections....

Let's take a look at the voter turnout by place 2012 to 2016 within the CD-12 precincts of Franklin County....



Now let's take a look at how Democratic these various municipalities are when it comes to Federal Elections.... Hint at the Statewide level these are overwhelmingly Republican Precincts in recent years....



So, although you will likely need to open the image in a new window to drill down to a level of detail, and working the long factory shifts, haven't really had tons of time to work on the visuals, but what really stands out is this:

Franklin County Precincts of CD-12 are NOT traditionally heavily Democratic at most election levels, even in 2016!!!!

What we see here are a handful of elections where Democrats have performed extremely well in various elections....

Even the precincts of Columbus only really voted heavily Democratic for Presidential Elections in '12 and '16, throw in a US SEN race from '12 with Sherrod, and OH-TREAS race from '14, but overall the results don't look particularly impressive, especially for US-House races....

Meanwhile Dublin looks like a Republican stronghold, with the exception of '16 PRES and '12 SEN, Westerville looks swingy but Lean Rep, and even Worthington generally votes 'Pub for most elections!!!!

Ok--- so now let's take a look at MHI by place within CD-12....



Wow!!! New Albany with an MHI of ~ $185k/yr went from 2012 (34-65 R) +31 R to in 2016            (  48-48* R)   for a +31% D swing....

Ok, not tons of people in these precincts, but still noteworthy...

Dublin clocks in with an MHI of $113.2k/Yr and in 2012 at the PRES level voted (40-59 R) and then in '16 (49-47 D) for a +21% D swing....

Meanwhile within the precincts in Columbus....

In 2016 (63-31 D) vs 2012 (59-39 D) for only a +12% D gain....

Where I'm trying to go here is that really we don't have any real history of even the "Democratic Strongholds" of OH CD-12 voting heavily Democratic, with the exception of the past few Presidential Election cycles plus votes for Sen Brown (D-OH)....

So before Dem avatars start getting too excitable, best not to develop too great a taste for the Hobbit leaf quite yet....

*IF* this election is nationalized in terms of local voting patterns, *AND* Dem Turnout is high, especially within the precincts located within the City of Columbus, and *ALSO* Dem margins in the Special Election within the Franklin County precincts look more like 2016 numbers, we might well have a horse-race....

Personally, my thought is that the OH CD-12 House Race will essentially be nationalized, and many of those Romney > HRC voters that went down-ballot Republican in virtually every election, will likely vote Democratic for the CD-12 Special Election.

Next Stop Delaware or Licking County....

[NOVA Green]

Glad to see you around! Hadn't seen you post in awhile (though maybe I've just not been looking in the right threads).

Thanks Fmr Pres Griff!!!

Been a mixture of factors, the whole work-life balance scene, going back to some classic old skool PC gaming, and also quite simply that I don't find political partisan primaries particularly interesting when it comes to running more detailed precinct level and social-demographic data unless it's  a US-PRES Primary, or a State or election I've been tracking...

I tend to defer much of the Primary detailed analysis to those on Atlas, such as yourself, that have a much better grasp on the intricate subtleties of Intra-Party political dynamics...

Besides, it's way too early to even comment on National Polling for many of these elections, since in the most interesting elections, we aren't even going to get a decent idea about how the contests might shape out until after Labor Day!!!!

Been doing a ton of lurking, especially now that most of the crap posters and trolls are basically done posting for whatever reason, and the overall quality of posts on most threads and boards have increased dramatically after all of the craziness on Atlas with the lead-up and aftermath of the '16 PRES election....

[NOVA Green]

Excellent post as always Nova. So here's my latest question. How do the various counties current share of the district's early vote compare to their share of the early vote at this time prior to the 2014 and 2012 elections? Would those numbers be at least a reasonable indicator of what the final share of each counties vote will be after election day? I ask because signs that Franklin County is outperforming its usual share, and by how much, are going to be every bit as key as O'Connor's margin there, frankly.

Another excellent question, and one that I don't believe we have comprehensive data-sets to be able to address, although some other posters such as Ebsy might have found access to data elsewhere that I have not yet obtained.

*** Off-Topic ***  Although I can't consider myself a true Buckeye, I did live in Ohio for four Years in the early 1990s when I was in College outside of Dayton, and was heavily involved in Labor and Environmental activism at that time, as well as to a lesser extent Civil Rights and the Student Movements, and still have much love and appreciation, and interest for the people of Ohio, as well as election related stuff, so it's a real pleasure to see and interact with so many Atlas Ohio posters, such as yourself on this thread....

Here's why your question(s) are virtually impossible for me to address at this time:

1.) Badger Question: How do the various counties current share of the district's early vote compare to their share of the early vote at this time prior to the 2014 and 2012 elections?

Ohio does not appear to have any type of central archive of Early Voting by Date

There are some States where we can pull up this data for a current election, and even a few that will have this data available for historical elections, but Ohio does not appear to be one of these States.

Hence, trying to assess the EV numbers by date is simply not feasible, unless I'm missing some key links somewhere, or if this data is stashed in some Google Archive somewhere....

2.) Badger Question: Would those numbers be at least a reasonable indicator of what the final share of each counties vote will be after election day?

Although I don't believe we can forecast the total post-election vote-share by County based upon the *current status of EV voting by previous party primary voting TO DATE *, we might well be able to forecast what % of the vote will be absentee vs Same-Day for portions of OH CD-12 within the various Counties....

Even there it start's get slightly problematic within the context of a Special US-House Election, since we can pull '12/'14/'16 numbers for total breakdown by ED/EV (ABS PAPER, ABS IVO, EDAY PAPER, EDAY IVO, & PROV) by County, but shifting patterns of Early Voting can make it difficult to estimate how this will look this August....

For example, within Franklin County portions of CD-12 there was a much rate of ED voting in '14 compared to '12 and '16. (I'll get back to Franklin County shortly).

Once of the challenges that I struggled with, as well as many other analysts struggled with in the AZ CD-08 Special Election was what Total Vote number would look like.... we pulled data from previous elections within the district, but it turned out AZ voters in CD-08 ended up voting much more heavily by Mail than normal, so we needed to adjust our total turnout and total voter models to accommodate, and even on election eve many of us (myself included) were overestimating the Same-Day vote.

Is OH-12 necessarily any different???

3.) Badger Comment #3: I ask because signs that Franklin County is outperforming its usual share, and by how much, are going to be every bit as key as O'Connor's margin there, frankly.

So pretty much all of us on this thread realize that Franklin County will be key to any potential Dem upset in a traditionally or "Ancestral Republican" part of Ohio....

As my somewhat detailed breakdown of the Franklin County portion of CD-12 definitively shows, even in the precincts located within the City of Columbus typically do not vote heavily Democratic with a few recent exceptions....

Much of the CD-12 portion of Franklin County tends to be relatively Upper-Income / Upper Middle-Class Anglos, who tend to vote at much higher levels, even in off-year elections.

4.) Here's what I have pulled together regarding breakdown of voting by EV/ED for Franklin County from '12 > '16....

Let's start with the total PRES vote in '16 by Vote Type (ED/EV) for ALL precincts in Franklin County...

The reason for this is that HRC way outperformed the DEM for OH CD-12 even within the Franklin County Precincts part of CD-12, so it gives us a snapshot, since I can't roll the numbers by precinct/place for EV within OH CD-12 being Franklin County and all that....



Now, let's look at the % breakdown by Vote Type for all precincts in Franklin County for US PRES '16 by Party....



Ok--- Check, so what does this tell us???

A.) DEM PRES voters in Franklin County (All) voted absentee at a higher number than Republicans vs ED votes....

BUT, look at the EV-IVO numbers vs the EV-Paper numbers....

DEMS in Franklin in '16 were less likely to mail in their ballots than go to an early in person voting center....

So obviously we see that Early Voting in Franklin County favors Republicans in Mail-in-Ballots and Dems do better with "In-Person" Early Voting.

B.) Now let's take a peak at the 2016 breakdown by Vote Type within the CD-12 portions of Franklin County....



Now let's look at the chart to see the distribution of voter type (EV/ED) for the OH-CD-12 Franklin County votes as a %.



So what does this tell us?

A.) Overall Absentee voting was higher for the Congressional Election in '16 in the CD-12 portions of Franklin County than in other parts of the County.

Roughly 48% of Dem ballots were cast early vs 36% of Pub ballots cast early...

'Pubs actually improved on their ABS-PAPER ballots, but lost ground on their ABS-IVO numbers....

Also, interesting to note for anyone concerned about 3rd Party Ballots in this election in Franklin County, they tend to be much more prone to vote on Election Day (ED) rather than EV.

Now, let's take a look at how Franklin Co CD-12 Voters chose to cast their ballots in 2014 for the US House Race....



Let's take a peak at the % of vote-types by party candidate for CD-12...



Pulling up 2012 for OH-CD 12 Franklin Co....



Let's look at the % of Vote TYPE BY CD-12 and PARTY in 2012....




OK--- anybodies brain hurting yet? Mine is from trying to pull this all together, and we're only talking about Franklin County CD-12 precincts and "Voting Types"...


So to summarize:

1.) We really need to understand the current breakdown of absentee voters within Franklin County by ABS-PAPER vs ABS-IVO, at this current time and to the lead-up to E-Day before basing estimates solely upon ABS (EV) voters to date.

There appears to be a much stronger correlation between support for a Democratic Candidate with ABS-IVO voters than ABS-PAPER voters within Franklin County, and within the CD-12 precincts within Franklin County.

Anyone have these numbers available and is there a way to track this through E-Day?

2.) In "Off-Year" Elections, the total ABS voters % decreases dramatically compared to PRES election years within CD-12.

Many voters in off-year elections simply vote ED or VbM rather than EV'ing in person....

In fact the % of DEM/REP US-House voters was actually pretty close in '14 compared to '12 and '16, mainly because of a dramatic drop-off in DEM ABS-IVOs.

3.) As I have stated before in different ways, we really don't have any decent modelling of what a DEM victory would look like in CD-12 other than some County level benchmarks pundits have thrown out, and also this 60% EV number that keeps floating around Atlas, although I haven't yet seen any type of actual statistical data to support this other than some generalities regarding OH-ALL EV voting patterns in PRES election years....

The limited amount of data we do have thus far appears to indicate that Franklin County is looking pretty decent compared to historical voting patterns within CD-12.

Unfortunately, not being able to break down the '16 PRES numbers by CD-12 within Franklin County for EV/ED voters makes it much more difficult to assess, considering how DEM's traditionally lose House elections by big margins, even in a hypothetical massive swing portion of Franklin County ('12 > '16 PRES swings).

4.) It does appear that something is happening within the Franklin County precincts of CD-12, where we will likely see a massive amount of both Turnout, Raw Votes, and unprecedented DEM margins for a down-ballot election, but will it be enough?

[NOVA Green]

Before I forget and move on to another County within CD-12, I thought it might be interesting to the run the numbers for US-PRES in the smaller places in Franklin County from 2004 to 2016.

I can't include Columbus, which accounts for roughly 50% of the Franklin County section of CD-12, because of precinct changes and all of that stuff...

Still, we can see how Dublin, Gahanna, Westerville, and Worthington voted from '04 > '16 at the Presidential Level....

Collectively these Cities account for roughly 40% of the CD-12 Franklin County Vote Share, and tend to be a bit more Republican even than the somewhat swingy with 'Pub lean portion of Columbus, Ohio located within the district.





1.) Dublin--- 2nd largest City in Franklin County (Pop 42k, 78% Anglo, 15% Asian, MHI $113.2k/Yr, 78% Degree > High School, heavily White-Collar Professional Occupations)

2.) Gahanna- (Pop 33.6k), 83% Anglo, 11% African-American, MHI $71.2k/Yr, 54% Degree > High School, Occupational sectors skew more Middle-Class

3.) Westerville- Pop 36.8k (3rd largest City in Franklin County), 85% Anglo, 8% African-American, 60% degree > High School Diploma, MHI $82.1k/Yr, Occupational Sectors mix of Upper Middle-Class and Middle-Class

4.) Worthington- Pop 13.5k, MHI $ 86.9k/Yr, 92% Anglo, 72% > HS Diploma Occupations skew a bit Upper Middle-Class....

Looks like maybe it might have some overlap with Professors and Administrators working at Ohio State University?

Regardless, this little chart shows how rapidly how the suburbs of North Franklin County are shifting away from the Republican Party at the Presidential Level....

We have yet to see them shift hard DEM for other down-ballot races, but if O'Conner pulls this out, it will likely be within these communities.

[NOVA Green]

Ok--- Time to do an initial survey of Delaware County to see what the Tea Leaves might indicate for this upcoming Special Election....

Let's start with US Presidential Election results by place 2004 to 2016.



Now, let's take a look at this same data in a graphical format.



Time to look at a summarized chart of the Vote Share by Place '04 > '16




So what is the takeaway from these three data points?

1.) The vast majority of voters within Delaware County do not reside within Cities as their municipal jurisdiction.

Roughly 71% of the voters between '04 and '16 have Townships as their Primary Political Jurisdiction....

Although this might appear as a bit of semantics the reality is that in many parts of the Country this creates an additional level of removal from the "Cities" when it comes to everything from Taxation, Zoning, Policies and regulations that cover everything from waste disposal to how often you mow your lawn, etc.... almost like living in an HOA, except many of these policies are enforced by the Governmental Jurisdiction, rather than the Home Owners Association.....

2.) Within the Cities of Delaware County we are increasingly seeing movement towards the Democratic Party at the Presidential Level in terms of RAW VOTE margins....

For example the growing sliver of the City of Columbus within Franklin County has been increasingly moving Dem in raw vote Margins, and we are also observing a significant decrease of 'Pub raw vote numbers in Dublin and Westerville.

I'll need to take another look at Delaware City, since the '16 PRES numbers look a bit odd, and just validate that I didn't accidentally include Delaware Township precincts from '16 in with Delaware City Precincts....

It could just be that the Delaware City portion of the County grew in the form of a large new subdivision, which actually would make sense with the increased vote share from '12 > '16.

3.) It's pretty clear just looking at the raw vote numbers that a DEM candidate will need to keep Delaware County RAW VOTE numbers down to something more like a +8-10k R margin, even if the DEMS are banking serious margins in Franklin County.

OK... Let's roll a few % numbers....

Now here we have the % of Vote by Party for US PRES Elections '04 > '16 by Place.



Look carefully at these % numbers, especially the "OTHER" numbers that after all account for ~ 70% of the County Vote.

Delaware City looks even fishier here, and I'll go back and validate that and move the data and charts around if there was a filter error with potential inclusion of Delaware Twsp data....

Still the fundamentals stand... we are continuing to see a significant erosion of Republican support at the US-PRES level even in the most 'Pub portion of the County (Townships).

Let's look at this same data in a graphical format...




I'll post a swing map later by place, but really the key take-away here, is that it is entirely possible that the Democratic Candidate in CD-12 will win big in the "Cities" (30% of the County Vote Share), lose in the Townships, but keep Delaware County Close enough so that Franklin County can erase the Republican vote margins from the other Five Counties within CD-12.

Next Stop, I'll take a more detailed look at the Townships of Delaware County, since this appears to be potentially Ground Zero of overall Delaware County margins in the Special Election.