Miles' Election Map Thread

[JacobNC]

Wow, this is a great thread.  You've put a lot of work into all of those maps.

If you are still doing maps, one that would be cool is the old District 7 vote for Congress this year.  I'm thinking McIntyre would've won it by a pretty large margin, seeing as he outperformed his 2010 numbers in many parts of the district that were left in tact (he barely won New Hanover in '10, but this year he won the gerrymandered Republican half of New Hanover narrowly).

A few questions I noticed in the thread, I'll answer them even though they're several months old.

Democratic strength in Smoky Mtns?  Partly because of economics.  Also because of the national park, which is obviously government run and brings a lot of tourism to the area.  And due to the environment; North Carolina doesn't have mining of any type (except in Mitchell County), so our mountain people are more pro-environment than the rest of Appalachia.

Elizabeth Dole strength in Northeastern North Carolina? Norfolk media market, most federal races are generic D vs. generic R.  State races lean more Democratic because the area has strong Democratic roots.

Do we have a shot at district 9?  Don't think so, unless the demographics change dramatically.  Obama worked really hard to GOTV in Charlotte so 60-61% is a ceiling for Democrats, unless you have a Democrat on the state level who is winning by a landslide.  South Charlotte is one of the few areas of NC that is more Republican in local/state races than federal ones.  Democrats rarely won Mecklenburg until Kerry won it in 2004.

[JacobNC]

Wow, that Mecklenburg County map is really striking.  What happened in South Charlotte?  A few thoughts...

1) the DNC did a really good job of registering new minority voters
2) the DNC may have had a negative effect on downtown?  IDK, did the extra traffic piss everyone off or something?
3) Surprising that Myers Park would swing most heavily against Obama since it was already the most Republican part of South Charlotte... Republicans did not have as much room to improve
4) Hmm, not sure about the theory that Romney was more acceptable than McCain.  Romney seemed like more of a partisan a-hole to me.

Keep the maps coming, though.  A map of Watauga County would be interesting.

By the way - if there is a way to do a precinct map of any Atlanta area counties, as someone else mentioned, that would be interesting.  Since Atlanta, politically, seems like a bigger version of Charlotte, it would be interesting to see if the same patterns and trends place there.

[JacobNC]

Cool.  Interesting to see that the movement towards Romney was not among college students  but the more rural parts of the county.

[JacobNC]

Happy Friday!

Looking at the Triangle trend map.. are we seeing the extremely early beginnings of the realignment of the Republican party? Rich, socially liberal fiscally conservative young college grads moving into the center of cities, gentrifying minority neighborhoods and moving the strongest D precincts further out. Or was Romney just a better fit for these voters? Or both?

That is a very interesting theory.  However, these trends are just comparing Obama '12 to Obama '08, but if you compared Obama '12 to Kerry '04, Gore '00, or Clinton, I think you would still see a strong Democratic trend in white areas of Wake and Mecklenburg County.

Cool.  Interesting to see that the movement towards Romney was not among college students  but the more rural parts of the county.

Actually, one of the precincts that trended Romney contained ASU. That was more of a dead cat bounce than anything though.

Watauga County can be divided into several areas and communties, which explain the voting patterns:

-The Town of Boone, which is dominated by the University and the people associated with. It's dominated by transplants and Northern-Influenced southerners, and It tends to be strongly Democratic.

-The Town of Blowing Rock, which is the second largest town in the County. Blowing Rock is very touristy and is dominated by retirees from Florida. It tends to lean republican, although the Democrats can be competitive.

-The rest of the county tends to be fairly Republican and typically Appalachian, with a good smattering of White liberals and moderates who live in the country due to high housing prices in Boone. There are also some more retirees.

To win in Watauga county, a Democrat needs to either rack up large margins in the Boone Precincts and/or make inroads in the rest of the County.

Good points.  You seem to be someone who is familiar with the area, so do you know why Mitchell & Avery Counties are so heavily Republican?

[JacobNC]

I was surprised by Johnson's lackluster performance nationwide.  I thought with all the cynicism about both Obama and Romney, a third party would do better.  He only got 3% in New Mexico.

[JacobNC]

Wow.  That one little precinct in Bertie County sure does hate Obama.

[JacobNC]

^^More minority voters were registered to his election and that helped to bump Obama's numbers in some precincts.  Dems in NC really did a good job at getting out the vote, as it was one of few states where Obama got more votes in 2012 than 2008; Republicans just did better, though.

Miles:  Thanks for the Southeast NC maps.  It looks like parts of Wilmington had the same swings as Charlotte and Raleigh, with the $$$ money areas around Wrightsville Beach going strong for Romney.  Those areas were also against Amendment One.

An interesting map to add to your list would be an Obama/Dalton comparison map.  Believe it or not there were a few counties in the East and the West where Obama did worse than poor ol' Walter Dalton.  Dalton didn't do well enough to win any Romney counties, although he nearly won Columbus and Chowan.

[JacobNC]

I really wonder what those counties in southwestern VA would look like if Hillary were on the ballot.

I wonder too. Personally - expect hodgepodge. Some counties (especially - after 2010) have, probably, gone Republican irreversibly, but there is no such almost universal "Appalachian hatred" of her, as is in Obama's case. Personally, i don't remember such heavy minority support and such rejection (almost visible hatred) on part of rural and southern whites, as in his case, during last 40 years i monitor US elections. It seems to me even Mondale vote in 1984 was "more balanced"

Yeah, I agree.

Hillary got over 80% in the primary in most of these counties. She'd be in a pretty strong position if those Democrats stuck with her in the general over the Republican.

What surprised me here was that relatively few people were willing to split there ticket for Kaine. Obama lost those counties 71/28; Kaine did only slightly better, as Allen won them 68/32.

If the pro-gun and somewhat pro-life Kaine couldnt do that much better than Obama in those counties, I dont see how Hillary could. 

Kaine got hurt by being on the same ticket as Obama.  If Hillary were at the top of the ticket I suspect Democrats would do a lot better in Appalachia.

Don't forget how popular the Clinton's were in Appalachia.  In 1996, Buchanan County was Bill Clinton's SECOND BEST county in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia, excluding super-Democratic cities like Richmond and Petersburg.

[JacobNC]

They should have handed redistricting responsibilities to the Council of State, then we still could've gotten a Democratic gerrymander.

Keep the great maps coming, Miles!

[JacobNC]

Blanco/Jindal... also Landrieu/Kennedy

[JacobNC]

Wow.  I didn't realize Perdue won the 7th district.  I think 2012 really was the end of east vs. west politics in North Carolina... forever.  Democrats will have to win by uniting the two.  East vs. west politics in NC dates back to the Colonial era.

And... yes, now I see you did Landrieu vs. Kennedy at the beginning of the thread.  Thank you.

[JacobNC]

I heard some NC political sci professor a while back say that Perdue would likely be the last Governor from east of I-95 for the foreseeable future. I think I agree; the center of state politics has shifted westward.

I'm thinking Roy Cooper will finally run for Governor in 2020, after McCrory's finished.  Isn't he from Rocky Mount or somewhere east of I-95?  He does want to move up, he's just afraid of running a race in which he's not the clear favorite.

The fact that Perdue won the new third by near double digits makes me think that Democrats could very easily compete for that seat when it comes open in a non-1994/2010 style year.  Its essentially the same district that Marty Lancaster held in the 1980's.  Probably a bit bluer actually. 

I think her big victory in Eastern NC was mostly regional, not party.  She even outperformed Roy Cooper in some counties there.  Counties like Carteret, Onslow, and even Craven Counties are hostile territory for Democrats even on the local level now.  And in the northeast, Currituck is very hostile territory, which is amazing since it was one of the most Democratic counties in the state just thirty years ago.

Still, it's possible that the 3rd could be competitive with a strong campaign from a conservative Democrat.  One possibility is Rep. Paul Tine (D-Outer Banks), I think he may be the only conservative Democrat left in the state legislature from the 3rd CD.

[JacobNC]

I think Democrats could be competitive in CD3 only in a wave year. In their respective races, Goodwin, Dalton and Atkinson all came within a point or so of winning it in 2008 and Wood actually carried it.

The erosion of Democratic support along the east coast has been very severe. This is what the State Senate looked like just back in 2004.

Speaking of which:  It would be cool if you could do a state map (like the Dalton-McCrory CD one) of some other 2012 downballot races.  I'm pretty sure Beth Wood won the 13th district and maybe the 2nd... and it would be interesting to see if any of them came close to winning the 3rd district.

[JacobNC]

^Wow, that's a good point you bring up.  Wake County would have almost perfectly fit its own district in 2000, when the target population was 619,000.  However, by the end of the decade it would have been one of the largest districts in the country and Brad Miller might have gotten thrown out in 2010.

[JacobNC]

Eeeek.  Patty Mac even won inside I-277.

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

[JacobNC]

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



"Not Voting" Counties:

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

Ironically, Cooper won Moore County in 2008.

Cooper best counties (over 80%):

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

Biggest improvements over Obama:

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

And in case you were curious:

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

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

[JacobNC]

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

[JacobNC]

Great job!  Wow, pretty crazy that a district stretching from Mecklenburg to Mitchell and Avery Counties was once a Republican vote sink.

[JacobNC]

^I think the votes in Hoke County were probably undervotes, voting for Obama but then skipping the rest of the ballot.

Raleigh beltway politics is very interesting... if you thought the biggest swings between Obama performance and downballot Democratic performance were in rural eastern NC you would be wrong.  Raleigh had some crazy swings... this is precinct 1-11 which is a super-rich Country Club Republican precinct off of Glenwood Ave.

71/28 Mitt Romney (R-President)
75/23 Pat McCrory (R-Governor)
65/35 Beth Wood (D-Auditor)!
83/17 Steve Troxler (R-Agriculture)!
54/46 June Atkinson (D-Superintendent)
53/47 Janet Cowell (D-Treasurer)

Even this super Republican, urban precinct voted to keep some of the Democratic Constitutional Officers.  Beth Wood's performance compared to Obama's is a 73 point swing!  Debra Goldman had serious problems, if the rest of the state's media had covered them like Raleigh's media did, Wood would have had a landslide win across the state.  Even my precinct in Wilmington, which only voted 53/46 for Romney, gave Goldman a win.

And it was the flipside in some super-Democratic Raleigh precincts - while voting heavily for Obama and even giving Walter Dalton a pretty big win, they voted to keep Steve Troxler and Cherie Berry in office.

[JacobNC]

I was looking at some old NC political maps today ('60s, '70s, '80s).  Here are some interesting things I discovered about NC politics:

The most shocking thing I found was Durham County voting for Jesse Helms in 1978.

Jesse Helms did very well in eastern NC.  He significantly overperformed Mitt Romney's performance in eastern NC (except on the coast).  That sort of goes against conventional wisdom that rural, eastern NC is trending Republican.

Terry Sanford's gubernatorial and senate elections best exemplify the eastern vs. western NC split in politics.

I can't find any election since 1960 in which Orange or Northampton Counties voted Republican.  They even voted for George McGovern in 1972.  Likewise, I can't find any election in which Avery or Mitchell Counties voted Democrat.

[JacobNC]

Swain County has a significant Native American population and Jackson County has Western Carolina University, as well as some Native Americans, which would explain those counties being so moderate.  Haywood County has the Great Smoky Mountains National Park which is run by the federal government, and I assume brings a lot of jobs to the area.  Madison and Yancey Counties, I have no idea... I actually have relatives in Yancey County and they're all Democrats but I don't know why.  It probably dates back to the civil war.

North Georgia was solidly Democratic locally until the 1990s, when everyone changed parties.  People like Zell Miller and Nathan Deal (former Dem) are from that area.  Northern Mississippi and Northern Alabama used to be bases for conservative Democrats in those states.  It's not like Eastern Tenn. or southeastern Ky. which has been Republican forever.

[JacobNC]

^Only in Asheville and Boone, and to a very small extent, Brevard and Tryon.  Most mountain counties gave Amendment One (gay marriage ban) more than 70% of the vote.

[JacobNC]

Some people theorized the leftward shift in many southern counties was due to fewer evangelicals turning out for Romney, but it appears as though there was actually a rise in black turnout.  Surprising.

Miles, do you know which states had the largest increases and dropoffs in turnout?

[JacobNC]

A PPP poll this week had Democrats leading the generic legislative ballot by seven points, and that got me thinking.  By how much would Dems have to win the generic ballot to flip one of the chambers (the Senate looks closer).

The Republicans really did do a good job with their gerrymander, however there are a lot of seats that might not be as Republican as they look on paper.  Take the 2012 Secretary of State race which Elaine Marshall (D) won 53.8-46.2, or 7.5 points - by my estimation she won several Republican-held Senate districts:

- Meridith (Cumberland)
- Goolsby (New Hanover)
- Rabin (Lee/Harnett/Johnston)
- Barefoot (Wake/Franklin)
- Hunt (Wake)

Then there are a couple of other Senate districts where she probably came pretty close to winning:

- Barringer (Wake)
- Jackson (Johnston/Sampson/Duplin)

Now consider a few more districts Marshall did not come close to winning but are winnable for Democrats on the state legislative level:

- Cook (Beaufort/Hyde/Dare/Currituck/Camden/Pasquotank/Perquimans/Gates)
- Davis (Cherokee/Clay/Graham/Macon/Swain/Jackson/Haywood)
- Newton (Nash/Wilson/Johnston)
- Hise (Rutherford/Polk/McDowell/Mitchell/Yancey/Madison)

Democrats would need to win nine seats to take control.  That seems like a tall order, something more reachable would be winning four seats to break the GOP's veto-proof majority in the Senate.  Then Pat McCrory would be forced to take ownership of what they pass.  In hindsight it would have been really helpful if Coleman could have eeked out a win in the Lt. Gov. race.

[JacobNC]

Those other seats that touch Johnston county and include a lot of fast trending GOP areas seem like a bridge too far.

That's true but Republican Ronald Rabin only won the Lee/Harnett/Johnston seat 51-49 despite his name rhyming with Republican Jesus.  He underperformed Mitt Romney very badly so Dems should definitely target that seat in 2014.