Talk Elections

This was mostly inspired by Homely's great work on his thread. Basically, I wanted somewhere to post my maps other than the Gallery, ya know? Anyway, for now, this will be a repository for the maps that I have already made and I'll post new ones as I create them! Most of the maps I make are broken down by CD, so I thought that this would be the appropriate board for them!

To open this thread, I have the 2008 Louisiana Senate election by precinct; I've been working on it for the last week or so! I did CD6 a few months ago and just finished the other 5. Enjoy!

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CD1
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CD2
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CD3
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CD4
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CD5
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CD6
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Great work, and a very interesting map. What's really interesting is the spotty nature of the map (as in there is no stretch of uninterrupted republican or democratic territory, apart from maybe the south east). Is this because all the small democratic towns have high black populations, or is something else at play?

Yes, the black vote, especially in the rural north, tends to be compressed into fairly compact precincts in the towns. In the rural river parishes (the middle part of CD2), the black voters are more spread out.

Landrieu really had a strong showing with white voters in the eastern part of the coastline (the bottom half of CD1) as well as in suburban New Orleans (where the Landrieu name plays well).

Here's a comparison of Landrieu and Obama by CD:

CD1
Obama- 25%
Landrieu- 43%

CD2
Obama- 73%
Landrieu- 79%

CD3
Obama- 34%
Landrieu- 48%

CD4
Obama- 39%
Landrieu- 51%

CD5
Obama- 36%
Landrieu- 47%

CD6
Obama- 31%
Landrieu- 43%

She outperformed Obama by the greatest margin in CD1, where she ran 36 points ahead of him. Again, even though its based in the conservative areas of Greater New Orleans, the Landrieu name is a venerable asset.

Congratulations, Miles, you've done some great work here. Could we have some insets of the larger cities (NOLA, Red Stick, Shreveport, etc.)?

The oil spill may have helped. (Beyond the obvious and larger factors of French Name and The Landrieu Name, obviously.)

This was before the oil spill. Though, I think Landrieu's efforts to secure funds after Hurricane Katrina helped her in that region. The oil spill will help her going forward though.



Sure, here are a few urban parishes: (I'll post Orleans and Jefferson later today)

Baton Rouge
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Lake Charles
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Shreveport
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Lafayette
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She won all of those parishes except Lafayette (where she lost by 10,000 votes, but its though sledding for any Democrat now there).

Also, I took a bit of a shortcut. DRA has Presidential data by precinct uploaded; with most of the cities, I assumed that if a precinct was >90% Obama, it was also >90% Landrieu. Thats probably the case for virtually all of them anyway.

Brainfart. My apologies.

This is very impressive work Miles.  Well done!  :)

As promised, here's a close up of New Orleans!

This is most of Orleans parish plus northern Jefferson parish. (I grew up there and I've always considered those areas of Jefferson to be basically part of NOLA anyway, lol).

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Thanks!

Good computer software skills there.

I do believe this will be the last map showing a Democratic Senate victory in Louisiana for quite some time

Happy 4th of July everyone!

My next post: NC 2010 Congress. I'll start rolling out individual CDs over the next few days.

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Also, you can just right-click the image to view the larger version in a new tab, but just in case, here's a link to view the full size map.  (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/72727_nc2010cvi.png)

I love you, Miles.

Hahaha :)

Very nice.

Here are the first 3 CDs:

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And for everything else:

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Finally, one last thing with the NC 2010 Congressional elections. This is the overall Democratic vote compared to the overall Republican vote.

One of the things I like about this particular election is it shows how an effective gerrymander works. The Democratic candidates, aggregately, only got 45% of the votes cast, but held 7 of the 13 seats (and barely lost the 8th one).

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How narrow is that little connection that keeps this district contiguous?

Damn Miles, this is incredible! :D

It uses touch-point contiguity. When he drew the districts back in 2001, that was the most efficient way for Brad Miller to include that portion of central Greensboro into his 13th district (thereby picking up Democratic voters) while still keeping the 6th a contiguous GOP vote sink.

Here's a close-up from DRA:

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'Just trying to keep up with you and Homely ;)

The Myrick map is hilarious.

Famous last words...

BTW great job, Miles! Stunning work!

That's actually the district where I'm registered. Myrick was always popular despite some many of her outlandish views.

To be more precise: The way it chops into (somewhat more Republican, surely) precincts of the city it surrounds and the chops then actually being the only places voting for the Democrat looks hilarious. Of course, these are probably "maturing" (democratizing) inner suburbs where a lot changed over ten years, but, well.It looks funny.

I'm a little surprised Hendersonville doesn't have any D precincts.  Some of the downtown area has an "old hippie" vibe.

Well, Jeff Miller was (is) based in Hendersonville. Even by state standards, its a very strong Republican county.

Enjoy, everyone! I'll have CD breakdowns for this as well :)

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Link to full-scale image. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/43406_NC2008GOV.png)

Perdue performance vs. McCrory performance:

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'Thinking about what to do next. Hagan/Dole and SC 2010 Congress are what I'm considering.

Any thoughts?

What explains the Democratic strength in those small mountainous counties in the Smoky Mountains?

That handful of counties, centered around Buncombe, has usually been Democratic in state politics.

I'm actually not sure; my guess is that since its a very poor area, social issues aren't enough to make them a Republican-voting area.

With Perdue specifically, I'm sure her ad with Andy Griffith played well there.

Ok, I've decided to do Hagan/Dole next.

AHH!! I just realized that I forgot to account for absentee and one-stop voting in about a dozen counties in the NC Governor map. I'll work on fixing that too.

Ok, here's the revised NC 2008 Governor map:

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The one-stop/absentee votes, which I forgot to add in the first iteration, skewed noticeably towards Perdue.

'Almost done with Hagan/Dole. Should be posted by tomorrow.

Ok, I'm a bit early, but here we go:

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Pretty cool maps!

The Hagan Dole map actually looks more GOP friendly than the Perdue McCrory one, because I see more blue. I guess Hagan derived her support more from urban and suburban areas moreso that Perdue, who was stronger on rural areas.

My guess as to why NC Central mountains are more D? Well, this is just a guess, but it looks like the core area of Democratic strength centers right around the Great Smoky mountains national park. The area is dependent on government protection to maintain the pristine nature of the mountains, so it's more of a unique dependency on government rather than a fear of it that you find in other appalachian areas.

edit: Also maybe more Native Americans?

Hagan won by 8.5% while Perdue id by 3.4% and still she carried more precints than the senator? Surprising :)

That's just a couple of precincts at the western edge of it.

Also in Robeson county, where the Lumbee tribe is located. Dole actually performed well there because she introduced bills aimed at recognizing the Lumbee. Perdue and Dalton each got 70% in Robeson, but Dole held Hagan to only 59%.

Well, that attests to how urbanized the state is becoming; voters are becoming more concentrated in the smaller city precincts.

Perdure swept most of the rural east, but she got blown away in Greater Charlotte, so those kinda cancelled each other out.

'Expanding my range to Virginia:

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Even though Etheridge lost the seat in 2010, he remained on good terms with Democrats in his old district. He beat Dalton there by 36 points in the Gubernatorial primary a few months ago.

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It would be cool if you could do CD primary maps.

The GOP Pres primary this year wouldn't be very interesting, but yeah, I'll definitely look into doing those from 2008.

Just from looking at the county results map (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=37&year=2012&f=0&off=5&elect=1), I'd say Etheridge also won the new 2nd; the old/new 7th would probably be close as well. I'll do those next.

Etheridge also got a pretty decent win the new 7th:

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Johnston county provided much of Etheridge's winning margin; without it, he still would have carried the district but only with 42.5% to Dalton's 41.5%.

Yeah baby! Who was the third candidate in this primary? where was his strength concentrated?

Bill Faison, St. Rep. from Orange and Caswell counties. Won only Caswell county.

I only tallied totals for Etheridge and Dalton, but I'd say Faison pulled about 7-9% in this district. Faison's best county here was New Hanover, where he got 10%.

Other than  Dalton, Etheridge and Faison, the reaming 7% or so of the votes here were pretty fractured between 3 other minor candidates.

I meant to post this here a few days ago, but I posted it over in the NC Congressional races thread instead. Anyway, I've moved it here:

This is a look at the swing between the 2002 and 2008 cycles.

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The county that swung the most against Dole was Meckleburg, closely followed by Hagan's Guilford base. Pretty much, all the major urban areas swung D by at least 20 points or better.

A few observations:

-In 2002, Dole framed herself as something of a maverick who would work in a bipartisan manner. However, as evidenced by things like her 92% party loyalty score and her Godless as, by 2008, her image as a moderate has eroded.

-Dole made inroads with blacks (winning 25%) and women in 2002, however, nominating a woman for Senate and a black man for President in 2008 helped Democrats to neutralize Dole's advantages with them.

-Perdue, McCrory and Hagan all ran ahead of their party's Presidential nominees in their home counties. Hagan did 9 points better than Obama in Guilford, Perdue did 28 points better than him in Craven and McCrory did 25 points better than McCain in Mecklenburg. Dole was the exception to this rule. While McCain got 61% in Rowan county, Dole was limited to less than 54%.

-For some reason, Bowles performed really well in the northeastern region; thats the only way I can account for the swing towards Dole there.

Here's the new 2nd. Etheridge didn't win here by as much he did in his old district, but he still got an outright majority.

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The old 2nd was a gerrymander, but at least it had some rhyme and reason to it: it was anchored in Johnston county while on its periphery, it took in >70% Obama parts of Raleigh and Fayetteville. Overall, the liberal urban areas cancelled out Johnston to make it a Democratic-leaning seat.  

This new district is just an incoherent mix of central NC, Cary/Apex and Fayetteville cobbled together to be as Republican-friendly as possible.

Other than the 3 I've done so far, probably the only other district which was competitive was the old 7th. I'll do that next; 'should be pretty close.

Love your maps.

:)

Finally, the old 7th. It was narrow Etheridge win, though the % going to the minor candidates was relatively high here.

Interesting how the two tied yellow precincts in the middle separate the green 'Etheridge side' from the  red 'Dalton side.'

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What they look like paired together:

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I find this map oddly mesmerizing. 

Just from looking at it, I'd say Goode won. Charlottesville cancelled out all those >60% Goode precincts in the southern part though.

Because of vern's idea, my next set of CD maps will be from the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries!

Kicking off my 2008 Pres Primary maps:

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I did CD2 first.

Pretty much what I expected, though those few Clinton precincts in Fayetteville kinda stand out at me since they're surrounded by overwhelmingly Obama, heavily black precincts.

I have another Obama/Clinton map coming soon...but it won't be from NC! ;)

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Oh, that's gorgeous. Well done. (Can I recommend color-striping the tied precincts, though?)

Yeah, I might start doing that as opposed to using another color (yellow in this case).

Comparing %'s for Obama and Clinton:

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An aesthetic tip: The shades of green are not terribly distinct at the <50% level, you may want to use a different color. When I make a series of related strength maps, I prefer to use the same color for all of them - usually blue or red.

As I mentioned before, I'm also working on breaking down my 2 previous statewide maps of NC by CD. I'll post them as I finish them; here are 3 sets of districts I've done so far:

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Ok, good idea Homely.

I'll keep using the green for my regular mapping, but for these strength-related maps, I'll stick to red for Ds and blue for R's.

Shifting gears back to the Democratic primary; here are 3 more districts. Thanks to Fuzzy for helping me crunch the numbers for these! :)

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This is a pretty simple map, but I've been wondering for a while what the results of this race were on a CD-basis. With the runoff in TX last night, I thought I might as well do this map.

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CD1: A pretty lackluster showing for Lincoln here, considering this was her base. Still, the results here almost exactly matched the state as a whole.

CD2: Lincoln performed very well in Little Rock, despite Halter's efforts to court Pulaski liberals; that accounts for Lincoln's fairly large margin here.

CD3: Also very close to the state as whole, but this historically R district has noticeably fewer registered Democrats than the other 3.

CD4: Texarkana served as a solid base for Halter in both the primary and runoff. There was a clear dichotomy here; Halter won the counties Texarkana corner of the district while Lincoln got stronger as the district moved towards the Delta. Halter's strength the west was enough for him to carry the district though, making CD4 a mirror opposite of the statewide picture.

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Miles, could you do other state maps by CD, perhaps gay marriage. This seems like a good format:

Yeah, sure. AR was easy because of its had whole counties, but I'll see what else I find :)

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Ok, I'll pick up the pace here in a while with the Obama/Clinton maps.

I only have 3 or 4 more districts until I'm done with the entire state of NC!

I want to see the 6th!

Ok, I'll do CD6 next!

This may be a bit random, but I did this set of maps today:

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Turner was basically unopposed in 2000, so I skipped that cycle. It would be cool if I could get precinct results from these TX maps.

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I have the Greensboro and Burlington hands of CD13 done; I should only have CD4 left after that.

More Arkansas maps:

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And here we are:

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Direct Link. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/41331_NC2008PDF.png)

Well, I guess I can't say I was disappointed when I crunched the numbers for this map; I knew going in that the result wasn't going to be something I liked!

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Great work!  :D

You're the best, Miles.

Thanks guys!

I'll be off of class until Friday as the hurricane blows over, so what better to do than work on maps! lol

agreed lol

Ughhh.....

Kissell's district was 15 points worse than McIntyre's.

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Here's how Amendment 1 is performing in the districts I've done son far:

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And for the primary:

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There were more Republicans running, but only these four actually carried precincts.

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A pretty obvious dynamic here; the non-Buncombe part (82% of the district) voted 77% Yes while it failed by 20 points in Buncombe county.

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An updated statewide map:

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(sorted by most to least conservative)
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Miles, if you can, it would be interesting seeing those maps for the old (current) CD's which much better reflect communities of interest.

Looking at those maps, they really test the rules of contingency.

Speaking of testing the rules of contingency, I don't think I posted CD4 on this thread:

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Once I make all the new CDs, I'll fit them together into a state map and them break that map down again into the old CDs :)

So it had that southern appendage only to keep some Republicans out of the second district?

EDIT: Nope, that's the new map. Makes for an... odd... look.

Well, that was the most efficient way for CD4 to pick up Democratic voters in Fayetteville.

Although they weren't all that Democratic.

But of course they didn't have much leeway trying to shore up the second, retake the 8th and not make the 7th less Republican in the process. There's quite a lot of people in Fayetteville after all.

The 4th's part of Fayetteville is 71% Obama, so that went a long way towards shoring up Ellmers.

One Democratic legislator proposed an amended map (http://ncga.state.nc.us/GIS/Download/District_Plans/DB_2011/Congress/Fourth_Fair_Legal_and_Compact/Maps/mapSimple.pdf) putting Cumberland county almost entirely in CD2 and making CD4 much more compact. It would have brought CD2 to 52% McCain, down from 55.7%, while unpacking the 4th.

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CD13 was 12% less conservative than the states as whole; Amendment 1 actually fell short of 55%.

The most interesting part of the equation here was Wake county. Despite narrowly voting for McCain (he got 50-51% there, IIRC), the Wake part of the 13th voted 53% Against. The electorate there behaved very similarly to that of the Mecklenburg voters over in CD9.

There seemed to be either low turnout in the rurals, high turnout in Wake, or something of a combination between the two. Wake county cast 70% of the ballots, while, in terms of registered voters, makes up 62% of the district.

The numbers for the rural counties may be slightly off, as there was an rather excessive amount of precinct-splitting with CD1.

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Miles, have you posted the gay marriage map for district 1? I looked through the thread and I couldn't find it. 

great maps miles :D

I actually did CD1 within a few weeks after the election, before I made this thread, so I guess I never got around to posting it.

Despite being heavily Democratic, it voted almost exactly the same as the state as a whole. In fact, outside of Durham, it passed with 67%.

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I always thought this district looks like a jellyfish lol

It does look like a jellyfish. I wonder how the vote in this district would have changed if it took place after Obama came out in favor of Gay Marriage?

Looking at the statewide CD map, it would interesting to gerrymander a third Against district.

Actually, it probably wouldn't be that hard. You'd probably just have to give the Wake arm of the 4th to the 13th, as the 4th could absorb more For voters; the 13th would then shed some rural counties and should then be an Against district.

Actually, a fourth Against district would also be feasible. You could give more Against voters in Charlotte to the 9th while pulling some strongly-For precincts in Union and Iredell out of the district. To keep the 12th Against, it could expand more into Greensboro and W-S.

If the VRA wasn't an issue, Durham could be used to possibly squeeze out a fifth district. But where would you use Durham? Maybe you could target CD2, as Ellmers was against the Amendment anyway.

I noticed that Dare County (where I've been on vacation several times; it's in Jones's district) voted for McCain but against Amendment 1. Any reason for this?

Well, during the debate on Amendment 1, the Democrats argued that it would hurt tourism in the state; I guess that argument sold well in Dare county.

I would bet that the old 13th may be Against (or at least close). It would be interesting to gerrymander the most Against CD possible--would prob. be Orange, Durham, most of Wake, and part of Chatham.

The old 13th was very close; it failed in Raliegh and Greensboro, but that wasn't enough to offset its landslide margins elsewhere:

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The Amendment 1 maps and the republican nominees weakness in Mecklenberg County are making me somewhat bullish on Jennifer Roberts. She seems kind of Kay Hagen-esque. I think this has potential to be one of the upsets of the cycle.

Funny you say that. Roberts release an internal poll earlier this week showing the race as a dead heat: http://votejenniferroberts.com/new-poll-shows-race-a-dead-heat/

Well, both Roberts and Pittenger are well known in the district. Roberts has been on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners for 8 years and Pittenger represented southern Charlotte in the State Senate.

That said, Myrick always overperformed the Republican bend of this district, and I don't think all of her unique strength will carry over to Pittenger. Also, I think Roberts was as good a Democrat as we could have run here.

Hagan came within 4 points of Dole there in 2008, losing 50-46; for now, I see that as more or less Roberts' ceiling. The district is obviously trending Democrat, so maybe when Pittenger retires (or makes a gaffe) the Democrats could pick this up down the line.

The poll has Roberts winning the Mecklenburg part of the district by 11, which I'm not sure I buy. Obama lost the Mecklenburg portion by a few tenths of a percentage point; Pittenger beat Dalton there by 12 points in 2008. Pittenger also got 68% in the Union part and 65% in Iredell in 2008, so I think its reasonable that he'll at least duplicate those margins this year.

Looking at the composition of the district, 71% of the vote comes from Mecklenburg, 14% from Union and 15% from Iredell.

If Pittenger matches his 2008 margins in Union and Iredell, and Roberts actually wins Mecklenburg by 10 points, Pittenger still wins 50-49.

According to DRA, the Republican average of the Mecklenburg chunk of NC-09 is 57%, though it was only 50% McCain. Pretty tough sledding. Don't forget that Pittenger had no problem slapping down $2 million of his own wealth to win the nomination.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see Roberts win (I'll be voting for her), but I'm skeptical that this will end up being close.

If there are any other insomniacs creative souls like myself who want to make precinct maps for NC, I hope this will help. I've uploaded my basic shape templates for each CD as well as a map of the entire state (where I've integrated the split precincts).

Just follow the links here, copy the maps into Paint/Paint.Net and you're good to start coloring.

This are for my standard-scale maps, though I'll have an even larger version coming down the pipe.


CD1  (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/2502_cd1rucho.png)
CD2 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/81928_CD2RUCHO.png)
CD3 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/52026_cd3rucho.png)
CD4 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/28941_cd4rucho.png)
CD5 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/63382_CD5RUCHO.png)
CD6 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/53780_cd6rucho.png)
CD7 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/37794_cd7rucho.png)
CD8 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/12885_CD8RUCHO.png)
CD9 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/58957_CD9RUCHO.png)
CD10 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/64482_CD10RUCHO.png)
CD11 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/28023_CD11RUCHO.png)
CD12 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/85020_CD12RUCHO.png)
CD13 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/4615_cd13rucho.png)


The individual districts should all be consistent with this statewide map (colors based on the standard DRA scheme):
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Southeastern NC is one of my personal favorite places, electorally speaking; its an area where conservaDems, like Kissell and McIntyre do very well. So, I always watch results there especially closely.

Here's Senate District 13, consisting of Robeson and Columbus counties. Despite the new VRA Senate districts and vote-packing by the Republicans, this is still the most heavily Democratic Senate district; less than 13% of voters in this district are registered Republicans.

I'm pretty sure that this was also the most pro-Amendment 1 district. Between the Robeson and Columbus counties, it passed with 85.8%.

I thought the visual contrast between Amendment 1's 72-point win and the registration gap (72-13 Democratic) would be interesting.

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It actually passed with less than 60% in CD6!

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This supports my observation of higher turnout in the more educated areas. Between Guilford, Orange and Durham Counties, it narrowly failed 50.4-40.6. Likewise, those three counties collectively make up about 46% of the district but they cast 54.6% of the ballots.

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With all 13 CDs!

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I've done the entire statewide precinct map, but does anyone know a website I can use to upload a 6600 X 2830 pixel image?

'And here we go:

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Link. (http://imageshack.us/a/img259/5858/nca1statewide.png)

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That map really shows how dominant Amendment One was in rural areas. Only 40 (of 100) counties had even a single precinct against it.

In addition to the 8 counties that voted against (Orange, Durham, Wake, Mecklenburg, Chatham, Buncombe, Watauga, Dare), here are the others with the likely area in opposition to the amendment, in order of overall pro-gay vote:

Guilford   (Greensboro)
New Hanover   (Wilmington, coast)
Forsyth   (Winston-Salem)
Polk   (Tryon (artsy community))
Pitt   (Greenville (East Carolina U.))
Jackson   (Cullowhee (Western Carolina U.))
Transylvania   
Warren   
Moore   
Northampton   
Alamance   (Burlington/Elon)
Hyde   (coast)
Washington   (coast)
Craven   (New Bern, coast)
Pasquotank   (coast)
Hoke   
Carteret   (coast)
Franklin   
Henderson   
Halifax   
Currituck   (coast)
Cumberland   (Fayetteville)
Wilson   (Wilson)
Beaufort   (coast)
Nash   (Rocky Mount)
Lenoir   (Kinston)
Bertie   (coast)
Catawba   (Hickory)
Rowan   (Salisbury)
Davidson   (Thomasville)
Burke   
Stanly

Any comments about the others--perhaps a fluke in some cases...

For all our sakes, Miles, I hope your insomnia is never cured. ;D

Very interesting map.  It looks like the GOP map drawers may have underestimated the amount of demographic change in the Charlotte suburbs.  That district doesn't look bad midterm proof at all. 

It also looks like FOR performed almost exactly at 2008 McCain levels in the 13th?

As usual, thanks to everyone for their input!

I've gotten a request to sort out the Amendment 1 results by the old CDs, so I'll be rolling those out as my next batch of maps (in addition to some other miscellaneous projects I'm working on!).

This was the clown car highly-competitive Republican primary to replace Bart Gordon. I think this is a pretty neat map. 'Good thing for Black that Rutherford County was excised from the new district.

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Since the old iteration of the 11th included the entirety of Bumcombe county, it was considerably more Against than the Republican version. Comparing the districts, it dropped from 71% For, under the new map, to 63% under the old lines, still a few points more conservative than the state.

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Amendment 1 passed in the old 9th by a noticeably larger margin than it did in the new 9th; it passed by 14% in the former versus 6% in the latter. These are the purely geographic reasons that I can think of to account for the difference:

-The old 9th was less Mecklenburg-centric. 60% of its population came from Mecklenburg but it when it was redrawn, that number was up to 70%.

-The new 9th contains less of Union county. Likewise, the Union precicnts that the new 9th retained were collectively less For (69%) than the old 9th's chunk of Union (73%).

-The new 9th traded out 75.5% For Gaston precincts in favor of slightly more liberal Iredell precincts, 73.3%.


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Something that I noticed was the county discrepancy in Rocky Mount. It passed by relatively lukewarm margins in the Edgecombe half of the city but passed in a landslide in the Nash precincts.

Well, since the old and new CD2 only share 29% of precincts, not much use in comparing them. Though, while the new CD2 is slightly more conservative than the state, Amendment passed by a heftier 2:1 in the old version.

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Here's how the statewide map is looking so far under the old lines:

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I crunched the numbers for a few more districts (I'll try to have the actual individual CD maps out this week):

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-The old 10th actually ties the new 8th in terms of highest % For (77.4%).

-The new 5th is a few points more liberal, as it loses Surry county but picks up more of Forsyth.

-The 7th is more or less unchanged. The old version was 69.6% and the new one is 69.9%. While the old one included all of New Hanover, liberal Wilmington was cancelled out by the presence of 86% For Robeson county.

Here's what it looks like when a Republican wins a D+25 district:

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So it looks like Cao did well with liberal whites, I'm I reading that right?

Yeah, there were quite a few >70% Obama white-majority precincts that Cao won.

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Cazayoux would have lost in 2010 anyway, but this election was nonetheless very frustrating:

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I was comparing the pro-gay% in areas of counties in black-majority CDs vs. the county vote. It looks like the black areas were more pro-gay (though perhaps because of white liberals moreso in such areas).

New CD-1            
           Gay%   other CDs   Gay% (in other CDs)

Beaufort   46.8%   3   26.5%
Chowan   31.3%   3   20.1%
Craven     38.0%   3    35.4%
Durham    66.5%   4,6,13     71.2%
Edgecombe   31.7%   13   19.6%
Franklin      40.1%   13   30.9%
Gates      28.1%   3   25.1%
Granville      32.6%   6,13   32.3%
Greene      26.4%   3   21.9%
Lenoir      36.5%   3,7   21.7%
Martin      34.1%   3   20.9%
Nash      18.3%   13   26.5%
Pasquotank   37.0%   3   28.5%
Perquimans   41.2%   3   30.6%
Pitt      38.3%   3   38.6%
Vance      28.8%   13   20.9%
Wayne      33.2%   13   18.3%
Wilson      32.0%   13   28.3%

New CD-12         
        Gay%   other CD's    Gay% (in other CDs)

Cabarrus    43.6%   8   29.2%
Davidson    29.2%   5,8   24.4%
Forsyth      54.5%   5   46.8%
Guilford      52.8%   6   49.0%
Mecklenburg   55.0%   8,9   53.9%
Rowan     34.1%   5,8   22.9%

Wow, it's amazing to see so many of Cazayoux's solid precincts in BR drop 2 or more shades Democrat.  I guess that's what happens when another Democrat runs.  lol 



Great job, btw.  :)

Here's a look at the non-Presidential statewide results in NC this year. I averaged the performance of the candidates from the 9 Council of State races on a county-level basis.

Democrats won the races for Auditor (Wood), Insurance Commissioner (Goodwin), SoS (Marshall), Superintendent of Public Institution (Atkinson) and Treasurer (Cowell). Jim Cooper was unopposed for AG, so he wasn't included here.

Republicans flipped the Governorship with McCrory and held their offices as Agriculture Commissioner (Troxler) and Sec. of Labor (Berry).

The LG race is currently too close to call with Dan Forest (R) ahead of Linda Coleman (D) 50.12%-49.88%.

Overall, between the 9 races, the parties were very close. Democrats got 50.3% of the share and Republicans got 49.7%.

How come Coleman won Jackson and Swain?

They're both pretty Democratic. Even in 2008, Obama won Jackson and only lost Swain by 2.

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.

Thank you :) Did you check out my 2012 NC thread here too?

Yes, I'm guessing the old 7th would have been 57-58% Dem this year, up from 54% in 2010. McIntyre improved in the areas that he held, but there was some dropoff with the parts that went to the new 8th though; Kissell had most of Robeson county this year and he only got 69% there (McIntyre got 72% in 2010 and 86% in 2008).
 
Pittenger will probably become entrenched. Otherwise, if he leaves, I could see it being competitive by 2016 or so. Roberts far exceeded by expectations this year. Just over the past 10 years, Mecklenburg has gone from 39% nonwhite to 49%; that trend has definitely bled over into south Charlotte.  

I did some preliminary math for the old CD7. For President, it wouldn't be statistically changed from 2008; I got 52.3/46.7 Romney. The Congressional vote was about 56.3/43.7 Democratic (up from 54/46 in 2010). 

This has actually been in the works for a while; I just recently compiled all these maps into a coherent chart. This is West Virginia's Congressional history from 1952 to 2012. 1952 was the first year that Robert Byrd was elected to Congress.

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You are wonderful.

Great West Virginia map series! It will  be crazy in 2020 when they in all likelihood slide down to two seats. 

Oho! The gauntlet is thrown and the battle joined. ;)

Thanks, everyone! :)

Two notes: While you have different maps for 1968 and 1970, you have the same data. I suppose this is an error in the 1970 data?

What the hell happened in the first district in '72?

Thanks. I must have switched the D and R data for CD1 in 1972. Arch Moore held that seat, but Bob Mollohan won it in 1968 and held it until 1983.

I'll fix those things (there were a lot of maps to keep track of!).

My favorite map is 2000. The light blue Republican district (Capito) looks funny sandwiched between the two dark red districts (Rahall and Mollohan both going unopposed).  

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lol 9 precincts lol

'Easy to see why Bart Gordon retired!

I'm more surprised Gordon held the district for as long as he did. R+13 is pretty tough, particularly given it was more suburban than rural.

The district that Gordon held in the 2000's was about three points more Dem than the current TN-06.  It included only moderately Republican(for Tennessee) and somewhat locally Dem Rutherford county, which was removed, and didnt include some now super Republican counties like Coffee, Fentriss, and Cumberland that were added to the district for 2012. 

Ironically, Democrats drew this district in 2001 so that they would have a decent chance of holding it when Gordon retired by removing fast growing and overwhelmingly Republican and suburban Williamson county.  That sure turned out well. 

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LA-04 in 2008

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If the election was in November instead of December, that would have probably done the trick for Carmouche; he would have had Presidential turnout and upticket help from Landrieu. Even so, I suppose this district would have been hard for any Democrat to hold down the line in 2010.

The results by parish:

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Fun fact about MilesC56: My aunt and uncle are in the FBI and they oversaw the prosecution of Bill Jefferson.


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Out of curiosity, how racially polarized is that map? At least some areas look like a sharp black/white divide.

(and on that note, did Obama win whites in New Orleans in either 2008 or 2012?)

Basically, the wealthier (read whiter) a precinct was, the more likely it was to vote against Jefferson. Jefferson held serve in the 9th ward and into Mid-City and Gentilly, all heavily black areas.

I haven't sifted through 2012 yet, but in 2008, Obama won the majority-white VAP precincts in Orleans Parisg 58-39. The big exception to that was Lakeview, the neighborhood that I was born and raised in (its on the western end of the parish is actually in CD1). Lakeview is 85%-ish white and was 67-31 McCain.

Democrats should have sued when Jindal tried to help Republicans by scheduling a needless runoff election in December.  There was no reason not to have the primary in early October as usual and then the general election/or runoff on election day in early November. 

Gray precincts in Vernon Parish?

They were empty.

This better become a series with the two 2006 elections and the 2008 general and ideally the 2010 and 2012 generals as well. Else I am going to be very disappointed.

Ok, sure!

I already have the 2008 general. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=155525.msg3474304#msg3474304)

Actually, strike 2012 I guess. (Not that I wouldn't like to see it - I would - but it'd not really part of the series.)

Ok, guys, I just got off the phone with a guy from the NC State Board of Elections. He said that most early and absentee votes should be allocated by precinct by next week. Thats been the main holdup for me so far, otherwise I would have made tons of NC 2012 stuff out by now.

I came across these maps of the 2011 legislative elections that I had forgotten about:

My uncle, Rep. Chris Hazel, won reelection in 2011. Chris holds a seat based in eastern Rapides Parish; his opponent was actually endorsed by Jindal. In the previous session, Chris and Jindal had crossed swords over the privatization of the state's prisons. (http://www.myopusmedia.com/view/full_story/19074699/article-Rep--Chris-Hazel-Speaks-Out?instance=video_player) Though I thought this would be closer, Chris swept all but 1 precinct in the district.

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This was another interesting race that turned out quite nicley; Rep. Nick Larusso is a good family friend. Because of the population loss, New Orleans lost a seat in the State House. Nick was drawn with another Representative, Johnny Labruzzo. Labruzzo had a reputation for being an aggressive blowhard; among other things, he was known for being "unapologetically pro-life" (http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/04/metairie_legislator_files_bill.html) and advocated a plan that would sterilize welfare recipients. (http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/09/labruzzo_sterilization_plan_fi.html) Its politicians like LaBruzzo that make Louisiana look bad.

Nick and LaBruzzo had each represented about 50% of the new district. Nick's base was in the Orleans Parish neighborhood were I grew up, Lakeview. LaBruzzo is from an area across the canal in Jefferson Parish called Bucktown. Looking at the map, its pretty obvious where Orleans ends and Jefferson starts.

What worried me here was that LaBruzzo has campaign signs everywhere. It seemed like you saw his face at every darn intersection. Thankfully, on election day, Nick did a better job of turning out his base. In Nick won the Orleans precincts 70/30, while LaBruzzo only carried his Jefferson turf 60/40.

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Corrected.Painfully obvious.

What sort of politics does your uncle have?

I'd consider him a pretty generic R. He ran on 'family values' both times.

Ah. Here I was thinking he was Tea Party lol.

LOL, quite the opposite.

He's been accused of being a RINO in the past!

It's Louisiana after all)) You can't be "too conservative" there)) But easily - "too liberal")))

Both of these seem to have been races where the too-conservative guy lost... the cajun primary is back and no Democrat filed, so they were R-R races on a GE turnout. And in that situation you can still be quite easily too conservative.

It was a sort of irony. There are no really moderate Republican officeholders in Louisiana i am aware of. Even moderate conservative... So, frequently, it's a fight between very and extremely conservative candidates. In SUCH situation very conservative candidate (Boustany, for example) can win over extremely conservative (Landry) of course, but that doesn't make him less conservative)))

It makes him less conservative than the other guy. -_-

True...

This is why I'm a centrist.

'Forget ideological purity, its usually a choice between the lesser of two evils now..Boustany vs. Landry would be a good example.

And here we geaux!!

I finally have the precinct data for NC!

Let's start off with one of my favorite results of the night! :D


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Performance Maps:

MCINTYRE
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ROUZER
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Hey Miles, love your maps! I had a quick question about Landrieu.

We've seen so many of the southern dem senators fall since she took office in 1997, but she keeps getting reelected, even in '08 with Obama at the top of the ticket- I assume he was NOT popular there, even then. She's approaching legacy status, what with her family name and her three terms, but she's by no means safe. All of her elections have been very close. It seems like she's perennially unpopular with about half of the electorate but she keeps holding on, so how does she do it??

edit: she won by seven in 2008, so not that close, but still kinda close!

Me too (though i am more conservative fiscally and more liberal socially then you). And exactly by the same reasons)))

Too close for comfort. Barrow's was much more heartening.

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Well, I'm a bit surprised here. I wasn't expecting south Charlotte to trend R. This kinda complicates my "NC-09 will be truly competitive within the next 10 years theory."

Romney's improvement seemed to radiate out from the South Park neighborhood, where I went to high school. South Park is a very wealthy area, so it makes sense that Romney would rebound there.

Generally speaking, Romney was a much better fit for south Charlotte than McCain. Romney's greater appeal coupled with Obama's overperformance there in 2008 made for a pretty noticeable Republican swing.

I was a bit disappointed with my own precinct, 114. If you look at the trend map, near the southern corner of the county, 114 is the light blue one directly on top the bright red precinct that looks like downward-facing crescent.

Despite swinging 20 points to Obama and voting Against Amendment 1, it trended about 4% Republican. Its pretty upper-middle class, though not nearly as wealthy as South Park, and heavily white, so Romney was a good candidate for the precinct.

For reference, here's how my precinct voted in the past:

2000: 66/34 Bush
2004: 67/32 Bush
2008: 57/42 McCain
2012: 61/38 Romney
Amendment 1: 53/47 Against

Romney did seem to overperform in most of the Southern educated suburb counties that were touted as big D trending areas in 2008.  The federal government areas of VA were the only real exception to this.  What was also interesting to me was the D trend in the rural South this time in areas removed from coal mining.

Cao won almost literally every non-black voter in the district in 2008.

There was one really big legitimate reason that the elections got delayed, you know:

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Does anybody have some precinct level data on Atlanta or metro Atlanta? Obama didn't lose too much ground there and some counties swung towards him, but I'd like to see it broken down.

I haven't done any GA maps in the past, though I'm trying to cobble together GA-12. Maybe after that I'll look at Atlanta. The problem with GA is that the names of the voting districts don't always match the shapefiles that I get from DRA.

Basically with Landrieu, there are a few things. There are a lot of people in some of the bigger parishes, like Livingston, Lafayette and Ouachita who I really don't think would ever vote Democrat. Her base obviously Greater New Orleans; she's been making inroads in other cities, like Baton Rouge, Shreveport and Lake Charles to help offset those three aforementioned parishes. She's also very popular along the River Parishes and along the Delta. The Cajun last name also helps in Acadiana.

any specific counties you'd like to see?

Gwinnett, Cobb, North Fulton. I doubt south dekalb/south fulton are that interesting and the data on the outer suburbs would just depress me.

Oh yeah, maybe douglas, newton, henry, rockdale

Nash County has the distinction of being one of only a handful of McCain -> Obama counties in the country.

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Cumberland (Fayetteville) and Robeson (Lumberton) counties, both strongly Democratic, swung to Obama.

Though Robeson was one of Amendment 1's best counties, it swung almost 4 points towards Obama. In fact, while southeastern NC was a very pro-Amendment 1 area, several other counties there actually swung towards Obama too. Ergo, I don't think Obama's stance on marriage was as detrimental to his standing in the state as some were making it out to be. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=154810.msg3325668#msg3325668)

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That's all very fascinating to me, Miles.  What do you think was behind the swing toward Obama in East NC?  It also looks like it was mainly a rural phenomenon save for Fayetteville... 

I think its similar to what happened in the rest of the deep south. McCain was a better fit for those areas than Romney.

Despite being from Johnston County, Rouzer "only" carried it 60/40 over McIntyre while Romney won it 63/36 over Obama.

This compares Romney's margins to Rouzer's:

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Romney performed better in every precinct. If Rouzer matched Romney's performance against McIntyre, he would have gone from a 50.1/49.9 loss to a 50.8/49.2 win districtwide.

Happy Friday!

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Must be nice to be making precinct maps of a state that didn't redraw its precinct boundaries after the Census. Jealous... >:(

Yes! Its quite a luxury!

My beloved Congressional district:

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This was probably the closest State Senate race in the country. Rep. Bill Cook upset Sen. Stan White by 21 votes out of about 87,000 cast.

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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.

You can get map of Watauga county here:
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/Watauga/43018/114036/Web01/en/summary.html

The pattern is, predictably, Boone vs. the rest of the county.

Oh, and if we're doing requests, Foxx vs. Motsinger would be interesting.

Yeah, those are good guesses.

Obama lost the Myers Park/South Park area 55/45 in 2008; the statewide average is 62/38 in the R's favor. Obama definitely overperformed there in 2008.
  
Watauga is coming!

Yep. Only 3 precincts trended D, and two of those were in Boone.

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

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?

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.

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.
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?

I actually was kinda expecting Johnson to do better around Boone. He only cracked 4% in one precinct.

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.

.
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?
[/quote]
I think you might be asking the wrong question- Watauga is the anomaly. The counties of Northwestern NC are extremely conservative in that traditional Appalachian way- A bit like East Tennessee. Avery was one of Alf Landon's best counties in 1936. Mitchell County is particularly conservative, which seems to be due to the area's isolation and homogeneity.

Oh, & I live around Boone, so yeah.

Miles, could you do Chatham County, GA?

I'll work on it. Chatham County changed around some precinct names between the elections, but I'll see.

I think you might be asking the wrong question- Watauga is the anomaly. The counties of Northwestern NC are extremely conservative in that traditional Appalachian way- A bit like East Tennessee. Avery was one of Alf Landon's best counties in 1936. Mitchell County is particularly conservative, which seems to be due to the area's isolation and homogeneity.

Oh, & I live around Boone, so yeah.
[/quote]ASU has the coolest mascot ever.  That's just about all I know about the place.

Avery and Mitchell have been Republican since the Civil War.

Ok, here's the plan for the next few weeks (or months): Hopefully, I'll begin rolling out Pres-by-CD maps of NC within the next day or so. I'll start with CD1 then go numerically until the entire map is done. I'll probably do the same for the Congressional, LG and Gubernatorial races (probably in that order). I'll also probably work in some LA maps along the way!

Also, I was looking back and I need to make a few relatively minor revisions to the Perdue/McCrory state map I posted over the summer.

Oh it must be so nice to work with official statewide data. I'd really like to make the maps I do without spending months and hundreds of dollars chasing county/municipal officials around for photocopies of their barely legible, hand-written canvass reports.

You're a lucky bastard, Miles. >:(

NC-01 was notable as it was among the fairly few CDs that swung to Obama. This map took me longer than I would liked, mostly because I had to do separate calculations for the (unnecessarily) split precincts in Greenville and Rocky Mount. The other districts should be faster as the precinct-splitting is more or less confined to CDs 1, 3 and 13.

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CALCULATIONS. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/12487_CD1SHEET.png)

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CALCULATIONS. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/56948_CD2STATS.png)

Miles, can you finish your Amendment 1 by old CD maps. Also, comparing Obama/Romney to Amendment One may be more telling than Obama/McCain esp. in fast-growing areas.

Ok, I can do the old maps; I have the statewide map for Amendment 1, so I can just carve out the shapes of the old districts and run the county/precinct calculations on them.

I think the Romney/Obama map would be good to have though.

For the larger counties, I can do maps of 2008/2012 trend vs Amendment 1.

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

Amendment 1 under the old CDs:

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COUNTY-LEVEL CALCULATIONS BY CD (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/10287_NCA1STATS.png)

I'll have the shapefiles up later; the actual calculations were more important, so I did those first.

For comparison, here is the map by the new CDs.
 (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/18200_NCA1NEW.png)
A few points:

- Though I posted otherwise earlier, I actually revisited CD13; the amendment actually failed there by about 2,000 votes.

- This map is more consistent than the new one. For example, every district east of CD12 (excluding 4 and 13) are all the same shade of blue.

- The old 12th would have been narrowly in favor of the amendment while the new one was slightly Against. This was likely a result of the Democratic packing. Kissell's hand into Mecklenburg voted 62/38 Against; when those precincts were transferred from Kissell to Watt, that turned the new 12th into an Against district.

- As I suspected, despite being less Democratic than the new version, the old CD4 was more Against. This is because the old CD4 took in more of the Triangle and did not reach down to heavily Democratic but socially conservative Fayetteville. The removal of of most of Durham also made the 4th less Against, but conversely made the new CD1 less For.

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Precinct 42, the striped one south of Winston-Salem, had 0.00% swing.

Great maps, Miles! Were you thinking of putting together maps for other Southern states? I would love to see maps of the Appalachian region. Mississippi would also be pretty cool. I would also love to help out in any way I can.

I'm doing a few with LA as well. I'll probably be doing more southern maps, but not for the swing/trend.

NC is convenient in that the precinct labels and shapes from 2008 are the same as they the ones from 2012. This makes calculating the swing/trend very simple; its a nice apples-to-apples comparison.

The Jacksonville/New Bern area. These 5 counties also happen to make up State Senate districts 2 (Carteret, Craven, Pamlico) and 6 (Onslow, Jones).

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For these swing/trend maps, I'll be doing two more; I'll have a swath of counties in southeatsern NC stretching from Columbus to Pender, plus I'll do Buncombe as well.

'Any more swing/trend trend requests for NC?

Damn; I forgot to save the swing map for Southeastern NC. That will be be next; here's the trend:

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Whoah, this looks really neat:

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Why did those inner city precincts in Winston-Salem and Greensboro trend so strongly Dem? Are they getting more black?

^^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.

This is what I was going to, Torie. I think the swing to Obama in black precincts was a function of the better OFA turnout operation.

The swing in the Triad lines up nicely with the racial map:

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The heavily black precincts make a crescent shape in Greensboro and a backslash in W-S. Less than a handful of these precincts trended R.


I think I'll add Sampson, Duplin, Scotland and Hoke counties to that big map; I think that would make it look more complete :D

Dalton even lost Columbus County; its voted for McCain and Romney, but no local Democrat should lose there. I think what was also embarrassing was the he lost his home county, Rutherford. I know that its though sledding for any Democrat, but he emphasized being from a "small town" in his ads and he won it by 20 points in hos 2008 LG race.

I can do an Obama vs. Dalton county map.

The swing in the souteastern corner:

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'Finishing up Southeastern NC!

SWING
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TREND
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Breaking with the numerical order I've been going with, it made more geographical sense to do this CD next.

I usually like to crunch my own numbers for these, but between Wake County and all the precinct splits with CD1, I deferred to DKE here for the calculations.

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I thought this thread was getting a bit too NC-centric.

Here's a little change-up:

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Miles, it would be good to see NC county maps with the CD lines superimposed to see the effectiveness of the gerrymander. Wake County in particular looks like a maximum Dem pack in NC-4.

I made this a while back:

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Thats based on the Congressional vote.

I'm keeping the county-level tallies of the Pres-by-CD maps, so I can do one like that with the Presidential data after I calculate all the districts.

Why the Obama DOJ ever precleared this monstrosity is completely beyond me.  What Republicans did to NC-04 didnt even create a black majority district.  They should have argued that this took away black voter influence in the 2nd, 7th and 8th.  The 4th going any lower than Wake county should have been a clear red flag. 

I wish the Democrats had seen the writing on the wall (as they were trailing by 11 on the generic ballot going in November 2010) and passed an independent commission. Any commission map would be better than this.

I guess they are just really, really stupid.  I saw this coming as early as June 2010, when polls of Democratic state House and Senate districts were coming out showing Democratic incumbents traiing badly.  They should have seen this and immediately got to work to pass an independent commission.

Any reason the gop couldn't have repealed the commission right after taking power? The commission probably wouldn't even have prepared a proposed map by january2011.

Add a clause that makes it unrepealable like Republicans did with the RTW legislation in Michigan. 

Are NC Dems that smart? :P

Re: MI's RTW law, you mean non-repealable by referendum? I can't see any provision saying a law can't be later repealed by legislation passing constitutional muster.

They also could have changed the redistricting law that would given the Governor the right to veto.

Well then they could have passed it and then governor Perdue would have vetoed it in 2011-2012.  Then, Democrats probably would have won back a House of the legislature in 2012 and blocked repeal there. 

That is good, though I meant a county precinct map of split counties with the outline of the CD borders. BTW, on that map, Forsyth County looks reversed.

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Ah, ok.

Actually, Foxx lost her part of Forsyth county.

And Watt's opponent won inner-city Winston-Salem? (or is that actually red--it's hard to tell esp. given no higher-resolution for that map.)

Its the D >90% red.

I probably should have map the map bigger so it would be easier to distinguish.

I'm doing some experimenting with GIFs!

This is NC Senate District 2.

Bev Perdue represented it for 10 years. In 2008, she carried it 53/45 against McCrory.

Fast forward 4 years, and Pat McCrory won the district 65/33.

Yikes.

The GIF is between 2008 (which is the one with all the red) and 2012 (which doesn't have much red).

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Yeah, this GIF stuff is fun!

This is Mecklenburg County 2008 President vs. 2012 Amendment 1.

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I am wondering why Republicans didnt just draw Watt a central city Charlotte district that wouldnt even have to leave Mecklenberg county.  It would have still been like 75% Obama, right?

Such a district would only be about 67% Obama. You'd also have to put his precincts in the Triad somewhere and there are lots of people in southern Charlotte who wouldn't want Watt as their Congressman.

I would be interested to see what Mecklenburg County would have looked like on Amendment 1 if Obama had came out in favor of gay marriage before the vote. 

2008/2012 trend vs. Amendment 1.

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Buchanan County, VA 2000-2012:

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Very cool! I'd love to see a similar map for the NoVa area!

Ok.

I want to some WV maps; precinct data there is hard to get, so I figured those old yellow dog counties in western VA would be the closest thing I could do for now.

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Awesome.  Is NOVA possible?

Yes, that is coming down the line.

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.

Nationalized Election? Phenomenon, which is quite frequent now. Is there ANY county in Virginia with relatively high difference (say, more then 7-8%) between Obama and Kaine?

No; but I guess I underestimated the nationalization/polarization there.

NoVA may be harder than I thought. For example, in 2000, Fairfaix County has 206 voting districts; by 2012, it was up to 243.

I'll probably start with 2004 and I'll have to make some educated guesses when filling in the precincts.

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.

Maybe if Clinton had become president in 2008 these areas would still be voting Dem, but the realignment looks permanent now as long as coal is a national issue.  I don't doubt that Clinton/Warner or Clinton/Schweitzer would do better than Obama there, but it's a different electorate now.  You can't get 1996 back just by running a different candidate.  And Obama has shown that there isn't much need to try anyways...

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Obama won three of the D >45% precincts (the two in Rockingham and the one in Durham) by exactly 1 vote.

great thread and great maps. how do you make your maps look so professional?

Thanks!

Well, I've been working at this for 3 or 4 years now. The programs I use are DRA, SnagIt Editor and Paint.Net for the images and Excel for the data.

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Excluding Buncombe County, the district was 64/35 R.

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I had few mistakes in the Congressional map of CD7 that I put out a month ago. When I went back and compared the Presidential map to the original Congressional map, I found a few Obama/Rouzer precincts, which seemed wrong. Here's the amended version:

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We're gettin' close!

Just a few more districts to geaux.

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Not a map, but comparing Obama's and McCrory's performances in NC in 2008 and 2012

2008 - best Obama/McCrory and McCain/Perdue gap (half of sum of major party margin)

Obama/McCrory   

Mecklenburg (McCrory's home county)   12.14%   
Union   6.22%   
Orange   5.00%   
Cabarrus   4.90%   
Wake   4.16%   

McCain/Perdue

Tyrrell   20.32%
Columbus   20.13%
Pamlico   18.04%
Martin   17.91%
Jones   17.58%

Obama/McCrory in 2012

Mecklenburg   11.55%
Cabarrus   9.25%
Union   8.11%
Catawba   7.95%
Burke   7.59%

Romney/Dalton

Rutherford (Dalton's home county)   10.06%
Cherokee   4.83%
Columbus   3.65%
Camden   3.51%
Gates   2.90%

Largest swing to McCrory:

Pamlico   23.17%
Tyrrell   22.68%
Carteret   21.00%
Hyde   20.59%
Alleghany   20.28%

Smallest swing to McCrory:

Mecklenburg   0.39%
Durham   0.49%
Rutherford   0.73%
Orange   1.38%
Wake   3.14%

Largest swing towards Obama

Northampton   2.21%
Anson   2.20%
Halifax   2.01%
Robeson   1.82%
Hertford   1.38%
   
Largest swing towards Romney
   
Alleghany   7.35%
Mitchell   4.77%
Ashe   4.71%
Macon   4.47%
Surry   4.36%

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And there it is, folks! :D

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FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/82985_ncruchostatewide12.png)

Pres-by-CD calculations by county are coming.

Now all you need to do to fulfill that above request (which I'd like to echo!) is to add the CD lines in white.

Are you sure that it's NC-12?

Ah, I forgot to change the name.

With lines distinguishing the CDs:

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FULL SIZE. (http://http://www.pictureshack.us/images/94688_ncruchostatewide12silver.png)

On deck: the state Congressional vote.

Thanks, awe-inspiring!

Good God, I hate this district.  It and NC-04 should be destroyed and turned into something good looking(and less of a Dem vote sink). 

This may be a bit random, but I thought it would make a good GIF.

This is NC Senate District 43, which is takes up most of Gaston County, NC.

In 2008, Senator David Hoyle (D) was reelected to a 9th term; despite spending $1 million of his own money, he hung on with 51.5%. Granted, Gaston is hostile to most any Democrat, Hoyle had won by much bigger margins in past years.

By the time 2010 rolled around, Hoyle saw the writing on the wall and called it quits. The Republican he beat in 2008, Kathy Harrington, ran for the open seat and won by 40 points.

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A Democrat won Gaston County?!?!

Yep. (http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/David_W._Hoyle) From 1993 to 2011.

Hoyle was mayor of Dallas, NC and could self-fund, so that helped. But still, yeah, Gaston County is rough.

Maybe It'll swing back in 20+ years with the growth of Charlotte.

Its really amazing.  That area hasnt had a trace of Democratic since 1976. 

I needed to make a few tweaks to the 2008 Governor map.

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FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/93534_NCGOVERNOR2008.png)

Could we please get a county map of this, by any chance?  Thanks :)

I was wondering how the old CDs in NC would have voted in 2012. Thus, as usual, I wasted used some perfectly good sleep/study hours to find out!

This is what I came up with:

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For comparison, this is what 2008 looked like:

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General comments:

- I know the swing was less than three points, but I was amazed at how similar the maps were; no district changed parties and only 4 districts changed shades.

- Like with 2008, in 2012, CD2 most closely mirrored the country. Ellmers would have been swept out by any decent Democrat.

- Other than CD1, which I was expecting, CD8 also swung Democratic. My explanation: while Cabaurrus and Stanly counties swung R, the counties touching the SC border swung to Obama. Also, on either side of the district, most of the precincts its Charlotte and Fayetteville hands swung to Obama. This is quite tragically ironic, as Kissell would have likely won by double-digits if he had to run in that district again.

- Though CD9 was the most populous district, CD4 would have cast about 35k more votes. From my experience in mapping NC, turnout in the Triangle seems to be noticeably better than that around Charlotte.

- As you can conjecture by looking at a simple county swing map, the biggest part of Obama's slippage came from the mountains. Between CD's 5, 10 and 11, the average swing was 4.9 points towards Romney.

HERE ARE MY COUNTY-LEVEL CALCULATIONS.  (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/20549_2012oldcds.png)

I will say that when I went to add up my CD totals, I was about 9,000 votes short of the statewide total (about 4.5 million). I suspect that most of these are from absentee votes and split precincts. Still, that 9,000 vote gap only accounts for about .002% of all votes cast, so my numbers should be pretty solid.

Feel free to look over my calculations and let me know if you see anything off!

Finally, here are some other maps I got out of this.

The counties with the CDs overlaid:

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SWING
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TREND
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On deck:

- NC Pres-by-precinct with county overlay.
- CD totals by county for the new CDs.
- More Louisiana districts.

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Stupid, stupid Democrats for not passing independent redistricting here in summer 2010 when it was clear that they would lose the legislature(all they had to do was read those brutal SUSA polls of the districts to know this).

The map probably would have stayed much like this, but with Kissell losing his parts of Charlotte and gaining more of Union, which only would have shifted the seat a couple points to the right and would have been survivable. 

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! :)

Under the old NC districts, Obama (2012) ran ahead of gay marriage by:

NC-1   31.4%
NC-10   25.5%
NC-12   22.4%
NC-8   20.8%
NC-2   19.3%
NC-7   16.3%
NC-13   8.0%
NC-11   7.6%
NC-3   5.3%
NC-5   4.8%
NC-9   0.5%
NC-6   -0.1%
NC-4   -4.3%

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Look at the all the red disappear...

This is NC in normal colors:

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I like the Atlas colors better.

Blasphemy!

I used that map for a Wikipedia entry, as most everyone else recognizes the normal colors.

I had a professor last semester that went off for like 5 minutes on how the networks were so stupid to reverse the colors from the world standard. Too bad it will never change back to the way it should. 

Could you make a North Carolina 2012 congressional results county map without any county splits.  In other words, Mecklenburg County is split so you'd combine the vote totals of Democratic congressional candidates in Mecklenburg parts of their districts to get the Democratic congressional vote in the county.  Or to be even more clear, how would a county map of North Carolina's congressional vote look if it were in the format of a statewide race map?  Does that make sense?  If you could make such a map, I'd appreciate it :)

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Seriously though, I do plan on making a map of the Congressional vote, but I don't think I'm exactly clear on what you're asking, X.

Just a county map of the congressional vote, split counties not split.

Ah, ok. So  something like this (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view&id=3584) but for only NC.

Although I would prefer a national map! :D

Maybe, thought lets start smaller ;)

The Congressional vote by county:

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Kinda odd to see Forsyth a darker shade of red than Guilford; probably has to do with Coble's likability and Foxx's polarization.

DATA (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/34164_CONGDATA.png)

These were the closest counties:

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Here's a neat little GIF I put together. It compares the maps for President, Congress and the average of the non-Presidential statewide races (which I hammered out right after the election. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=155525.msg3519747#msg3519747)).

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I'm looking for some input from my great readers!

As ya'll have noticed, I'm working on LA Pres-by-CD. After that, I'm trying to decide which LA map to do next. Its going to be either Blanco/Jindal (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=22&year=2003&f=0&off=5&elect=0) or Obama/Hillary. (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=22&year=2008&f=0&off=0&elect=1)

Which would ya'll rather me do first?

Blanco/Jindal

Obama/Hillary

Blanco/Jindal... also Landrieu/Kennedy

Landrieu/Kennedy is the first series of maps in this thread ;)

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Its about 68/31 Romney between these three:

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Obama/Hillary..

I hope to have NC Gov-by-CD out soon.

I hate to keep knockin' poor Dalton, but there really aren't any good ways to spin the results.

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Outside of the three safe districts, Dalton didn't crack 40% in any others.

'What 2008 looked like:

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Here's McCrory vs. Romney:

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This is pretty much what you'd expect.

McCrory overperformed the most in CD9, where he came close to tripling Romney's margin. My precinct, which is in south Charlotte, is a good example of this: 60/38 Romney and 77/21 McCrory.

Mecklenburg County makes up 52% of CD12, and McCrory did 13 points better there than Romney.

McCrory's three worst district compared to Romney were 1, 3 and 7. I guess my best explanation for this is that there was a contingent of eastern voters who didn't want a Governor from Charlotte.  

Dardenne is trying to walk back (http://www.nationaljournal.com/blogs/hotlineoncall/2013/03/dardenne-says-he-s-not-taking-steps-toward-a-senate-bid-07) speculation that he's taking steps towards runnnig.

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.

Perdue won CD7 by 259 votes; if the Republicans just split or swapped around a few precincts, they could  have easily turned it into a McCrory district. Perdue's win there gave me hope for McIntyre. McIntyre, though, put together a slightly different coalition; he did better than Perdue around Wilmington but fared a tad worse in the northern counties.

Yeah, the east vs. west divide is gradually becoming less the norm with each cycle. NC, like most everywhere else, is becoming more uban vs. rural.

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.

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 know, 'shame on me. I took the lazy way out and broke down Orleans Parish by ward instead of voting district. At this point, I just want to get through all the districts so we can get to the state map. I can always go back and redo Orleans Parish by voting district.

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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.


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.

Ah, good point.


This. Its hard to believe that Onslow County was almost a perfect bellwether for the state in that race. No Democrat other than Perdue would have carried it.

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 (http://ncga.state.nc.us/GIS/Download/District_Plans/DB_2011/Congress/Rucho-Lewis_Congress_3/Reports/DistrictStats/SingleDistAdobe/rptDistrictStats-3.pdf) 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 (http://ncga.state.nc.us/GIS/Download/Maps_Reports/Party_Affiliation_Maps/2003/Interim_Senate_by_Party.pdf) just back in 2004.

To be fair, isnt that map from before the Dem maps were struck down?

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.

Yes, but I don't think the redraw radically affected any eastern coast districts in terms of partisanship.



Yeah; I was thinking of at least doing LG, because it was almost exactly 50/50, but I can do a few others.

Wood lost CD12 55/45 in 2008 and she performed worse in 2012. The closest a non-Cooper Democrat came to winning there was Atkinson, who lost 51/49.

Lt. Gov-by-CD

I was hoping that Coleman would crack 45% in CDs 3 and 8, but my humble hopes were shattered.


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It would probably worth going back and calculating how the old CDs would have voted.

A few more thoughts on the LG race:

Coleman vs Obama by county:

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*The Presidential numbers are based on the two-party vote, as their were no third parties running in the LG race; this made for more of an apples-to-apples comparison.

- This is for the most part what I expected. Coleman outperformed the most in the northeast coast and in the southeast. Note Senate District 13 (Robeson and Columbus Counties); Coleman did about 17-18 points better here.

- There almost looks like the Amendment 1 map, as there is an obvious urban rural divide. Despite losing by a greater margin, Obama ran outran Coleman in 4 of the state's 5 largest counties (Cumberland was the largest county were Coleman performed better).

- Obama's overperformance in the urban counties was very slight, less than 3 points for each, but if Coleman had matched him in each, she would have won.

- Which brings me to my next thought: Coleman ran 1.1% behind Obama in her home county, Wake. If she matched him in Wake, I'm pretty sure that that alone would have pushed her over the top.

-Rutherford County looks like something an outlier. It was Dalton's home county, but he still lost it by 12; maybe Dalton actually helped Coleman there.

Coleman vs Obama by CD:

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How the old districts would have voted:

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The most pleasant surprise was that Coleman would have actually carried CD7.

Another reason why I am so mad at Democrats in 2010 for not preparing early on for what was clearly going to happen that year. 

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I'm still mystified by how the North Carolina Republicans even managed to pull that off mathematically.

'Ya have to give credit where credit is due. They did a great job.

Its a masterwork of packing. There was a lot of GOP strength locked up in CDs 6, 9 and 10 that was dispersed very well during redistricting.

It helped Republicans that CD1 lost population; that way, they could cram Durham into it, making it even more of a sink.

For the new CD4, it was just a matter of grouping together the most Democratic voters from the old CDs 2, 4 plus some form 8 and 13.

CD12 was also packed more tightly, going from 71% Obama to 78%. It changed in three major ways: 1) Less rural voters; this is why new CD12 is thinner than the old one. 2) In the south, it took additional black voters from CD8's hand into Mecklenburg county. This of course, also helped to push Obama's % down in CD8. 3) Up in Greensboro, it took in the little hand of precincts from the old 13th; these were obviously heavily Democratic.

This is the absolute worst result, IMO:

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Thats Hagan/Dole. If you were just looking at the map, you'd never guess that the Republican lost by 9 points.

Dole got 26% in CDs 1 and 4 and she didn't crack 20% in CD12 but won all the others 50/46-ish.

It really is a disgusting map.  Not only is it really ugly, but it goes against century plus precedents everywhere.  For example, the fourth was always a strictly Research Triangle district, not something that looks like an Octopus that goes all over the Eastern half of the state.  The seventh always had the Lumbees in it.  The 11th always had Asheville and all of Buncombe county. 

It's disgusting.

So was the previous one.

I'm not denying it.

It just needs saying from time to time. :D

Nowhere near as bad as this one.  The only really sick thing they did was add that little hub of Charlotte to NC-08. 

The touch-point between CDs 6 and 13 was pretty devious as well.

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I dont disagree.  Im assuming a fair map would have created a more evenly balanced NC-13 in 2001, probably by making Wake county its own district.  However, by 2008 it would have had a distinct Dem lean. 

^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.

Miller would have had a single digit race in 2010, but he almost certainly wouldnt have lost.  Even Elaine Marshall came within a point of carrying that district/Wake county in 2010. 

Hmm, yeah. Using 2000 numbers, Wake County would have been just 8700 people over the population of a Congressional district; only a precinct or two would need to be removed. The downside for Dems would be that Etheridge would lose his (heavily D) precincts there.

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

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

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I drew a map for this over here. (https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=156282.msg3664854#msg3664854)

As props to Blanco for calling out Jindal (http://www.wafb.com/story/21724622/former-la-governor-publicly-criticizes-jindal) this past week, I've decided to do the 2003 Governor map next.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/779_lafinalpres12v2.png)

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

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

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

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

2012 President vs. Governor in Mecklenburg County.

Its pretty obvious which is which:

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Yikes....

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

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FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/81684_mccrorystate.png)

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.

McCrory vs. Romney in Mecklenburg County

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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"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.

Good idea.

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

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DATA. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/38042_agvepres.png)

Cooper would have fallen below 50% in 16 counties:

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

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

Davie   50.97%
Henderson   50.72%
Union   50.58%

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

Cooper vs. the total SoS votes.

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

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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.

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

I have a request!

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

Ok. I'll start with that next!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lol, you don't have to quote the whole thing for things like this. I'll know what you're talking about ;)

I'll try. I'll see what else I can dig up :)

Hmm, there doesn't seem to be precinct-level data on the website for 1988 or 1992 :P

Kind of dumb how Democrats didn't also concede the 9th here as they did in their actual map in order to make the 8th safe by adding the most Dem parts of Charlotte and giving much of Union and Cabarrus to the 9th.  That way, they would have had five districts at the end of the decade and possibly even six if they had recruited a better candidate to take back the 5th in 1996 in a district that likely voted for Clinton in 1992.

The swing for Terrebonne and Lafourche Parishes.

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Thanks!

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If you could tell me which counties are which and in which districts they are in, I could actually try and estimate Presidential numbers in these districts. 

My first map from a northern state ! :D

I probably won't do many, as Homely does an excellent job of covering NY, but I was really interested in this race.

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Awesome!  :)

Good job :)

Beautiful job, ugly map... Hochul was such a great Congresswoman...

Like I did with WV a few months ago, here is the Congressional history of NC; this is the last century's worth of elections. For some of the maps, I consulted Fuzzy's maps (hat tip to him) and Ourcampaigns.com. I just wanted to put all these maps into a standardized set.


FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/6938_nctempli.png)

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Please tell me if you see any mistakes!

I also made this set to go with the one in my last post. These are NC's Congressional maps grouped by decade. The number under them correspond to the first election cycle that they were used for.

A few things:

- There was no redistricting for the 1922 or 1952 cycles.

- There were some mid-decade changes in the 1960s and 1990s.

FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/69867_NVMAPFRAME.png)

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

In the earlier decades, the Democrats did a good job of diluting the Republican strength in the west. The western Democrats were routinely reelected wit less than 60%.

An assortment of State Senate districts I randomly felt like doing:


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McIntyre vs. Obama

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Columbus County is really in a category of its own here. Obama lost it 53/46 but McIntyre won it 65/35. In fact in Obama's worst precinct there was 85/14 Romney; McIntyre carried that precinct, though by a single vote.

New Hanover County was more uniform than I expected. I expected McIntyre overperformnace to be the most pronouced near the southern part of the county. Instead, he ran a consistent 20-ish points ahead of Obama throughout the county.

As you would expect, Johnston County, where Rouzer is from, is pretty low on the crossover spectrum. Even within Johnston, the closer you got to the Wake County suburbs, the less voters were willing to split their ballots.

Finally, Obama actually performed better in one precinct in Hoke County. It was heavily black, IIRC, and they each got at least 97%. Still, I'd like to meet those Obama/Rouzer voters so I can slap them silly.

You're doing a great job Miles. Congratulations!

^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.

Pretty map. I like.

No kidding.

The Lenoir County hand of CD7 was 71/28 Romney voted 51/47 for Perdue in 2008. I think McIntyre could improve his % there in going forward.

The swing in the south from 2004 to 2012.

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Of the 1373 counties, 54% of them swung to Romney. Romney's best was Knott, KY, which swung 75.2% towards him. Obama's best was Webb, TX, which swung 39.8% Democratic.

Kissell vs. Obama

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As you would expect, the further into the Piedmont you got, the less voters were willing to distinguish Kissell from Obama.

Kissell ran the furthest ahead in his homebase of Montegomery County, which is ordinarily slightly Republican-leaning by statewide standards. Sadly, only 4% of the districts votes came from there.

I was expecting Obama to perform better in a few Richmond County precincts because that dumb Demcorat who was running as write-in was from there. I didn't realized that while Kissell and Obama each got 50-51% in Richmond, Hudson only got 38% compared to Romney's 48%.

There are about 5 precincts oddly split in Union County that are relatively small; I just left those blank.

That one blue precinct in Robeson County kinda bugs me.

Finally though Hudson was from Concord, he failed to outrun Romney in any of the Cabarrus County precincts, reflecting his semi-carpetbagger status. Kissell, by contrast, has always lived in CD8.

Finally, on a bit of a personal note, while I was doing some research, I found that Hudson and I graduated from the same high school. Its kidna cool to have someone from my high school in Congress, but it sucks that it was at the expense of one of my favorite Congressmen.

Pretty deep blue, too. Something wrong with the result possibly.

I double-checked that precinct and its seems to be right, though it cast more Congressional votes than Presidential votes, which is unusual.

These are the first in a series of maps I did the other day looking at PVI by county. Instead of using the national vote as a starting point, I calculated the PVI of each county compared to the state result. And, since this is PVI, I used data from 2012 as well as 2008.

Here's the Presidential PVIs per county:

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The Presidential vote between 2008 and 2012 was 50.4/49.6 Republican.

Obama's best county was Durham, which was D+27. After that, Hertford and Orange were tied at D+22.

Yadkin was the most Republican at the Presidential level, R+24. Randolph, Avery and Mitchell were all R+23.

Obama lost Lenoir County both times but it still had a slightly D PVI.

These are the PVIs for non-Presidential statewide races (this would be compatible to the D/R Averages in DRA). For this, I crunched 18 races between 2008 and 2012: Gov., LG, Auditor, Ag. Commissioner, Insurance Commissioner, Labor Commissioner, SoS, Superintendent of Public Instruction and Treasurer. For the sake of symmetry, I excluded AG in 2008.

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Overall, the average vote was 51.6/48.4 in favor of Democrats.

I guess the first thing I noticed is that Democratic strength is less intense, but more dispersed.

As I expected, the county that changed the most between the two maps was Columbus. There was a 29-point gap between the state average, 60.5/39.5 Democratic, and Obama's performance, he lost it 54/46 both times. This made its Presidential PVI R+4 but for state races, it was D+9.

Obama improved the most in Mecklenburg County; D+12 Presidentially but only D+8 on average. In Durham, Wake and Orange he also performed at least 3 points better than the average.

In GIF form:

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'Should be pretty easy to tell which is which.

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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.

No kidding.


Yeah. There were a few outliers though, as Sanford won Union County in 1986, which would be unheard of today.

For Orange, you have to go back to 1928!

I don't think Avery/Mitchell have ever voted Democratic. Those two belong over the boarder in eastern TN.

One county that always stuck out at me was Sampson. Its swingy today in statewide races, but going back in Presidential elections from the 1920's until the 1950's it was always considerably less D than the rest of eastern NC.

The Parishes of LA

2008- 2012 PVIs

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Since I didn't have a 'state average' to compare this to, I did calculations for the 2000-2004 PVIs.

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Back then, the parish the state's two-party vote was 55.6/44.4 R and went up to 59/41 in 2008/2012.

'Hard to believe that Calcasieu and Allen parish were slightly Democratic when compared to the rest of the state. Acadiana was much 'swingier' back then.

The first map is more polarized, as you would expect. Orleans Parish, for instance, went from D+34 to D+40.

The GIF for LA:

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Ah! I forgot to post data for LA. Oh well, I'll have that out soon.

I'd like to do the SC-01 election next :D

Sanford actually narrowly lost Union in 1986 and also Johnston, while solidly losing Mecklenberg.  Crazy. 

Awesome NC maps.

It always baffles me how a lot of the mountain counties are so moderate while the Georgia mountain counties just a few miles south are so very Republican.

:D

Yeah, the three mountain counties at the very tip of NC (Cherokee, Clay, Graham) are all pretty Republican by state standards (65%-ish R average) but even they're not as R as those in northern GA. The big exceptions, as I've said are Avery and Mitchell; they were both about 75% Romney and belong in eastern TN.

There is, of course, a mountain in the way.

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.

Its hard to believe that North Georgia remained Democratic even locally past the late 1960's.  There is almost no black population there like there is in Northern Mississippi and Northern Alabama. 

My understanding is that Democratic strength in many Western NC counties comes from the TVA, although I'm not sure. There's also a significant population of hippie types in a lot of those mountain areas.

^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.

There are some hippie types in Henderson County as well.  Nice little hemp enthusiast store on main street Hendersonville, right next to the arthouse cinema and the fairy sculpture shop.

Going along with my swing map, here is the trend map for the south from 2004 to 2012.

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The swing from Kerry 2004 to Obama 2012 was 6.3 points, so the swing map was adjusted to reflect that.

The swing from 2004 to 2012 for the entire country:

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Wasn't Boucher favored, even just before the election or something?

Yeah, Nate Silver even had Boucher winning.

This is the voter turnout shift from 2008 to 2012. Yellow counties cast more votes in 2012 than 2008 while turnout fell in the purple counties.

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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?

On the state level, Dave Wasserman kept a spreadsheet of raw turnout (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXElO_QdHpla01oWE1jOFZRbnhJZkZpVFNKeVE#gid=19), which was helpful; I just took that idea and applied it to the counties.

Biggest increases:

DC: +10.5%
CO: +7.0%
UT: +6.8%
NV: +4.9%
NC: +4.5%

Steepest drops:

OK: -8.7%
VT: -7.9%
NY: -7.5%
KS: -6.1%
WV: -6.0%

My favorite is NH, which cast two more votes in 2012 than 2008.

I was surprised that parts of central Appalachia cast more votes in 2012; I just thought lots of Democrats that didn't like Obama stayed home.

Also, the increase in western ND makes Heitkamp's win even more impressive.

I suppose the most definite conclusion that can be taken out of the 2012 election is that the Democratic Party's traditional manifestation in Appalachia is as dead as a doornail. I suspect that Elliott County will fall by 2016/2020, and the long death will be complete. KY and WV should have republican state legislatures within the the next 10 years or so, if not sooner.

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FULL SIZE. (http://www.pictureshack.us/images/97539_nc2sw.png)

What's up with the huge swing in that one western/Tennessee border precinct?

Very few votes (less than 25) were cast in the precinct during either election.

Must have been a switch from Dems staying home in 2008 to actively voting against Obama because of coal.

This was one of the (increasingly rare) races where Wake was more Democratic than Mecklenburg, mostly due to Goldman's tumultuous tenure on the Wake County School Board.

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I've been sitting on this map for a few weeks now and just getting around to posting it.

2004-2012 Trend

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As the expert of redistricting of this forum, do you think you would manage to delete most of the majority minority districts in South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Texas?

Delete them? How so?

Because the Voting Rights Act was partially declared invalid, so I suppose the republicans can delete the majority minority district now?

No, as that would violate Section II.

Thank you! So what does it change?

The states aren't obligated to send their draft maps to the DOJ for preclearance.

And additionally, Republicans like those majority minority districts because they keep minority voters out of what would be marginal adjacent districts.

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.

By looking at the seats, it would seem that Merideth(Cumberland county) should be pretty low hanging fruit.  It's almost impossible to draw a seat wholly in that county that's any worse for Democrats than a toss up.  The New Hanover and Wake county seats should also be very good opportunities as the latter only continues to get more Dem. 

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.

I think for that district a Presidential electorate would be needed, but it should at least be on watch.

I would think that a district with Johnson county would be better for Dems in an off year.

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Some exciting news! Today I was at Senator Hagan's office for breakfast. I thought it would be neat if I printed up a copy of my 2008 Senate map to bring to her. I brought three copies; I gave one to Senator Hagan and she signed the other two for me!

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Yes, I had to flip the colors, as the Atlas scheme would have confused her!

That's awsome Miles :), wish I could meet her and other senators.

I passed by Mark Pryor's office when I was walking around. It was a neat trip. I stopped in and saw David Vitter and then Kay Hagan. When I was walking around the Hart building, I saw Al Franken and Mark Kirk talking with their of consituents.

I'm trying to schedule a meeting with Mary Landrieu...I met with her two years ago, but I never got the pic from it :P

In the Summer of 2015 when i go to Washington,  I'm going to try and get a meeting with both arkansas senators, Claire, and a few others that I really like.  My dream is to meet dianne Feinstein

The lovechild of Tom Hagen and Kay Corleone should have been able to deal with Atlas colours. :P

Senator Hagan when I showed her the map:

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I love her face in that pic.

County-level PVIs for 2008/2012:

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EVEN Counties:

Granville, NC
Jefferson, AL
Racine, WI
Porter, IN
Calhoun, MI

I met with another Senator today ;)


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Congratulations! :p
How is she in real life?

She's awesome. I actually met with her two years ago and I stopped back. I asked her if she'd come speak with us College Democrats down at LSU and she said yes :D

Well, I suppose you have photos with her? :p

Yeah, they'll be up soon :)

Also, when I showed Landrieu the map, she said the exact same thing as Hagan: "We need to put more blue on that map!"

Cartographic leadership? Undoubtedly. But I don't think the honorable Senator was referring to that. ;)

Honestly, I'm confident about Landrieu. I expect her improving her margins!

I'm still waiting on the pics from Mary, but at the College Democrats convention, I happened to run into my buddy Tim Kaine! Regrettably, I didn't have a map on hand to give him!

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Tim Kaine is a great guy.

2004/2008 PVI by County

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Here's how the EVEN counties shifted between the 2004/2008 and 2008/2012 cycles:

Larimer CO: EVEN -> D
Granville NC: R -> EVEN
Jefferson AL: R -> EVEN
Chester PA: EVEN -> R
Sumter GA: EVEN -> D
Grant MN: EVEN -> R
Hill MT: EVEN-> D
Menominee MI: EVEN-> R
Delta MI: EVEN -> R
Racine WI: R -> EVEN
Porter IN: R -> EVEN
Calhoun MI: D-> EVEN
St. Genevieve MO: D -> EVEN

Major counties flipping from R to D :

San Diego CA
San Bernadino CA
San Joaquin CA
Hillsborough FL
Jefferson CO
Forsyth NC
Pitt NC
Loudoun VA
DuPage IL
Kane IL

Major counties flipping from D to R:

Jefferson TX
Madison IL
Bucks PA
Suffolk NY
Volusia FL
Stark OH
Montgomery OH

And here we are!

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This is Wake County in 2012. Overall, Obama carried the county by 55,666 votes. However, with the voters who cast ballots only on election day, he lost by 8 votes.

Would any supporters of the NC voter suppression bill care to defend its cuts to early voting?

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