Talk Elections

We all can agree that 9-11 played a significant role in improving (a little) Bush's numbers in the NYC area. But there are lingering questions:

Kings 2000:
Gore 80.6% 497,468
Bush 15.7% 96,605
Nader 3.2% 19,977
Other 0.5% 3,109

Kings 2004:
Kerry 74.9% 514,973
Bush 24.3% 167,149
Other 0.8%  5,762

Why would Brooklyn have the sharpest shift among the NYC boroughs (excluding Richmond, which would elect Rick Santorum if he ran for pres.)? Curious, b/c most Manhattan cops and firefighters--the people most likely to feel the shift--live in Queens, where the shift wasn't nearly as strong.

Nassau vs. Westchester:
Nassau 2000:
Gore  57.9% 341,610
Bush 38.5% 226,954
Nader 2.5% 14,780
Other 1.1% 6,363

Nassau 2004:
Kerry 52.2% 323,070
Bush 46.6% 288,355
Other 1.1% 6,918

Westchester 2000:
Gore 58.6% 218,010
Bush 37.5% 139,278
Nader 3.1% 11,596
Other 0.8% 2,891

Westchester 2004:
Kerry 58.1% 229,849
Bush 40.3% 159,628
Other 1.6% 6,293

I understand that Westchester is more economically mixed than homogeneous middle class Nassau. But why would 9-11 impact Nassau residents more than those in Westchester when both make groups work in the city?

The other question I had was on the ultra-rich Suffolk Co. NY and Bergen Co. NJ. If you compare their 2000 and 2004 results, you'd see that while Kerry improved Gore's results by around 9 000 votes, Bush improved his own by 60 000, which is a touch too numerous to call "911 voters". 

When the 2004 township results for Connecticut are posted, I wonder if the Fairfax Co will show the same types of shifts. 

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Another interesting thing is that Manhattan had the smallest Bush swing of any county in the NYC metro area...

Nassau County can hardly be called "homogeneous middle class" and Suffolk County is hardly "ultra rich."   There are very wealthy areas in both, but there are also some quite poor areas as well.  In addition to the middle class majority.

My town (which lost 9 people--which, for a town of 12,000, is pretty devastating) actually swung the other way.  Gore lost the town in 2000, but Kerry (the first Democrat ever to do so) won in 2004.

Several factors:

1) Bush hatred.  Iraq erased any good memory of Bush for a lot of people.  Also, in this neck of the woods, it was always Rudy, not Bush, who was the real leader on 9/11 itself.

2) Continuing influx of Young Rich Democrats.

3) End of Republican one-party rule in the southern (and generally filthy rich) half of town (see 2)

Obviously, this doesn't reflect on the pattern at large, but I thought it should be noted.

Manhattan 2000 Gore wins 79.8-14.2
Manhattan 2004 Kerry wins 82.1-16.7

Basically no change.

How dare they forget about 9/11?  - sarcasm

Yeah, I've always wondered whether the Rep swing in the NYC area is really due to 9/11.
Let's not forget that the Dem's 1996 & 2000 results in the NYC suburbia were well above par, so this is more like a return to normal. Probably more to do with gun control not being an issue this time around then with the WTC.

Well, it is worth noting that most of the people working in WTC probably lived in the suburbs, not Manhattan, although I am not totally sure of that.

Bush got a decent swing in the Boston suburbs. Not many WTC workers there I'd think.

For comparison's sake, here's the 2000 CT Township map...

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What town?

What's that third dark red cluster well east of Hartford?

After doing much googling (which, as a search technique seems to get worse every day), the Boston Globe printed a list of the election returns by town for all the New England states. These are the results from MA:

http://www.boston.com/news/special/politics/2004_results/general_election/ma_us_president.htm

While I didn't expect Bush to carry many towns, the figures he lost by in some of the Boston suburbs are eye-popping. While Boston is no big surprise--44K vs. 159K--the Cambridge and Somerville results are staggering: Bush received only 5K votes out of 30- to 40K total. Framingham and Lexington are nearly as bad.

By comparison, Bush lost Springfield and Worcester by normal urban northeast US margins. Strange when you consider that both towns are by comparison, are a great deal poorer and have more minorities.

The only towns where Bush was competitive--and still lost--were Plymouth and Barnstable, in the sparsely settled southeastern part of the state. Even Weymouth and Quincy had better results than any of the towns west of the Charles River.

These results are very old, and I'm certain that after all the absentee ballots were counted, Bush lost by an even bigger margin in all of the towns I mentioned.

Massachusetts Township maps...

2004

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2000

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The only problem with the comparison is that 50.1% is shaded the same as 59.9%, or in the Democrat's case, 60% is physically indistinguishable from 90%.

It is interesting that in 2004 a broken ring of pro-Bush towns surrounded the outermost suburbs of Boston. That wasn't present in 2000. That, and the utter collapse of the GOP in western MA, particularly along the upper Connecticut River valley

The MA results aren't too surprising.  Kerry was the hometown guy in a state that is already the most liberal in the land.  The real question is why are there any blue counties at all?

There aren't. That was a township map.

I'm not sure I'd call it a cluster, but the darkest red-shaded township in Eastern Connecticut is Mansfield, which includes the village (they may call it a town) of Storrs, which is where UConn is located.  I believe that shade of red that covers that township in the 2004 map is the Dem. >70% shade, while the shade of red that covers the townships between Mansfield and the darker-shaded municipalites around Hartford is the Dem. >50% shade, and Kerry won 54.3% of the vote in Connecticut in 2004 so having that latter shade is nothing out of the ordinary for Connecticut.  The fact that there is a tied town nearby, with a diagonal pattern that I determined long ago using Microsoft Paint does not use the same color at least of red that would have been used if Kerry had received one more vote (why am I mentioning this? who knows?) and a town which Kerry won without a majority right next to Mansfield (and several towns which Gore won without a majority in 2000 in the area), may make Mansfield and some of the nearby towns seem more like Kerry strongholds than they really were in the election.  But I wouldn't consider a couple adjacent towns where the Democrats cracked 60% in 2000 and 2004 (one of which Kerry got more than 70% of the vote in 2004) with another greater than 60% Democratic town nearby to be a cluster comparable to the one around Hartford.  It is interesting to note some darkly shaded red municipalities so close (even adjacent in places) to some Republican towns, however, so I appreciate you pointing that area out.  Perhaps the townies in the Storrs area vote Republican partly out of reaction to some (in their eyes) unfavorably Democratic traits that are all the more clear around a major public university, and it shows in the towns where not a lot of the students live.  I could be way off, however, although I'm sure that the UConn vote is part of why Mansfield is so heavily Democratic.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lamoreau

Actually, Kerry did worse than Gore, if you include Nader's votes.

9/11 did have an impact, as well as the Bush camapaign being able to position Kerry as being soft on security.  Long Island is definatley trending Democrat (county elections & Congressional elections have become more & more Dem).  The biggest difference in 04 from 2000 on the Presidential elections had to do with 9/11 & the preceived weakness of Kerry.  Bush got a bunch of hold the nose voters in Nassau & Suffolk.  My dad who is a moderate/ lean liberal (votes over the years have been mixed, but voted for Clinton twice & Gore in 2000) voted for Bush despite not liking him or agreeing with him on any issue (has no problem with Gay marriage thinks, the FMA idea is stupid, very pro-choice, pro-Gun Control) mainly because he really didn't like Kerry.  In 2008 barring someone like Rudy or McCain on the GOP ticket (which won't happen) expect both Nassau & Suffolk to go back to a double digit win for whoever the Dem candidate is.

Bush W. only lost NJ by 7 percentage points. That was less than the 16 point deficit he had in 2000 to Gore. Obama won the state by 15% in 2008 and 17% in 2012.

Nassau/Suffolk shift was from upper/middle class whites and the 9/11 effect.  That being said, Long Island has changed dramatically.  Don't underestimate the number of minorities on the island now.  Most of those people stayed democratic.

The New York area has a pro-incumbent trend tendency (Sandy alone doesn't explain the NY/NJ swing for Obama, for instance).

I think Brooklyn's swing may have been related to the Orthodox Jewish vote- what were the swings in Southern Brooklyn like vs. Williamsburg?


Cambridge and Somerville are basically extensions of Boston. Also, Cambridge has Harvard, which pushes the area to the left.

Because those voters are more likely to shift GOP over an issue in the first place.  Manhattan liberals were NEVER going to vote for Bush, no matter what he did.  White suburbanites and working class guys in Brooklyn/Queens voting GOP?... Sure, if something happens/an issue pushes them that way. 

Can someone tell me why we dig up nine year old threads?

I mean, it's going to elect a Democratic U.S. Representative in 2014...