To review what everybody probably already knows, Republican Scott Brown had won a special election in January 2010, to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the Senate. Then in Nov. 2012, Brown lost his bid for a full term to Elizabeth Warren. Warren won 53.74% to Brown's 46.19% (and 0.07% for scattered write-ins). At the same time, the Presidential race went this way: Obama 60.65%, Romney 37.51%, others 1.84% (0.98% for Johnson, 0.65% for Stein, 0.21% for write-ins). There were 11,214 less votes for the Senate race than the presidential race. Elizabeth Warren got about 225,000 less votes than Obama, while Scott Brown got about 270,000 more votes than Romney. It's easy to guess that at least 200,000 Massachusetts voters were for both Obama and Brown.
Counties: Romney did not win any of Massachusetts's 14 counties; Brown won 5.
Municipalities: Romney won 95 out of 351 cities/towns; Brown won a large majority of them, 203 to Warren's 148.
Congressional districts: Romney did not win any of the nine districts; Brown won the 6th district with 53.62%, he won the 9th district with 51.09%, he won the 3rd district with 50.79%, and he won the 4th district (which contained his home, his old state rep district, and most of his old state senate district) with 50.32%.
State senate districts: Romney did not win any of the forty districts; Brown won 16 to Warren winning 24. The best district for both Romney and Brown was the
Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, and Middlesex district, made up of 28 towns with none of those towns having a 2010 population as high as 13,000 (I think of it as Mass's most rural senate district); Obama beat Romney by a margin of merely 6 votes: 48.775% to 48.767%. Brown won the district with 59.10%; even his former senate district (Norfolk, Bristol, and Middlesex) voted for Brown by a narrower margin of 56.62%, and besides W, H, H, and M, there were five other districts that Brown carried by wider margins than his N, B, and M district. The average number of presidential votes in a senate district was 79,194, and the average number of senate votes was 78,914. The highest number of votes in any district for both races was in Cape and Islands district (Dukes and Nantucket Counties and 12 of the 15 towns in Barnstable County): 107,861 votes for president and 107,687 votes for Senate. That district voted 56.41% for Obama and 51.04% for Warren. The lowest number of votes in any district for both races was the Hampden district (a large majority of the city of Springfield, about one third of Chicopee, and all of West Springfield): 54,885 votes for president and 54,323 for senate. That district voted 76.61% for Obama and 70.54% for Warren.
State Representative districts: Romney won 25 out of 160 districts; Brown won 73 out of 160. Therefore, 48 districts voted for both Obama and Brown. Statewide, the average number of votes cast for the presidential race was 19,798.5; the average for the senate race was 19,728.5. I took all 160 districts and ranked them from the lowest number of votes cast to the highest, and divided them into 10 groups of 16 districts each. In the lowest group - what I call the first decile - the number of votes cast for the senate ranged from as low as 10,430 to as high as 14,158, with an average of 12,447. Warren won all of these 16 districts by landslides, and the average percentage for Warren across all these 16 districts was 73.836%. Out of the first decile, there were 14 districts that lay within the largest cities of the state, and 2 within medium-sized towns. Five of them lay within Boston; two within the city of Worcester, two within Springfield, and one each in the cities/towns of Brockton, Everett, Fall River, Lawrence, Lowell, Lynn, and Malden. So most of the largest cities of the state had much lower than average number of votes cast, but those cities were where Warren won by the biggest landslides.
In the second decile - where the average number of votes cast for Senate was 15,133 - Warren won 15 districts, leaving only 1 district that voted for Brown (and even that one Brown won by a pretty narrow margin).
In the third decile - where the average number of votes cast was 17,284 - Warren won 12 districts and Brown won 4.
In the fourth decile - where the average number of votes cast was 18,602 - Warren also won 12 districts and Brown again won 4. (Warren's margin in 8 of those 12 districts were landslides.)
In the fifth decile - where the average number of votes cast came closest to the state average: 19,580 - Warren and Brown both won 8 districts each. So out of the five lowest deciles - the half of the state with the lowest amount of votes cast - Warren won 63 districts and Brown won 17.
In the sixth decile - where the average number of votes cast was 20,627 - Warren won 4 districts and Brown won 12.
In the seventh decile - where the average number of votes cast was 21,530 - Warren won 6 districts and Brown won 10.
In the eighth decile - where the average number of votes cast was 22,793 - Warren won 4 districts and Brown won 12.
In the ninth decile - where the average number of votes cast was 23,769 - Warren won 6 districts and Brown won 10.
In the tenth decile - the highest, with an average of 25,518 votes cast - Warren won 4 districts and Brown won 12. So in the half of the state with higher number of votes cast, Warren won 24 districts and Brown won 56. The total number of votes cast in the first decile was 199,160, and the total number of votes cast in the tenth decile was more than twice as much - 408,292. Across Warren's 87 districts (which cast slightly less than half of all the votes), she won an average of 64.56%, whereas across all 73 of Brown's districts, he won an average of 56.78%.
Whew!
