2010 State PVI County Maps and Bellwethers for States With Senate Elections

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Below you will find maps showing the state PVI for each county or other reporting subdivision (in New England, towns; in Alaska, Delaware and Hawaii, lower house districts).  The color scheme is Atlas Swing, with colors darkening in 5 percentage increments, the darkest colors being D or R+20 or greater.  Bellwethers, which I've defined as counties with state PVIs from D+1 to R+1, will be highlighted in gold.

The 36 states are listed in the table below:

Alabama	Alaska	Arizona	Arkansas	California	Colorado	Connecticut
Delaware	Florida	Georgia	Hawaii	Idaho	Illinois	Indiana
Iowa	Kansas	Kentucky	Louisiana	Maryland	Missouri	Nevada
New Hampshire	New York	North Carolina	North Dakota	Ohio	Oklahoma	Oregon
Pennsylvania	South Carolina	South Dakota	Utah	Vermont	Washington	West Virginia
Wisconsin

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Alabama:



The two AL PVI bellwether counties are R+0.4 Lauderdale (which includes Florence) and D+0.26 Lee (which includes Auburn).

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Alaska:

This is going to require three maps.  The bellwether HDs are in the Fairbanks (HD-09) and South Anchorage (HDs 27, 29 and 30) areas - which are dwarfed in land are compared to the rest of the state:

State overview:


Anchorage area:


Fairbanks area:


If Alaska election results trickle in the way they usually do, we likely won't get House District-level data until most of the non-Bush precincts have reported.  The AP just reports Alaska results by statewide tally.  So this information may be of limited use come election night.

FYI - there are 40 Alaska House Districts.

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Arizona:



The AZ PVI bellwether county is Navajo (R+0.08), which was somewhat surprising to me. Some of the county is on the Navajo and Hopi Indian Reservations, but a good portion isn't.  Off reservation, it's home to Winslow, Show Low and Snowflake.

Maricopa County isn't a bad bellwether either, with an AZ PVI of R+1.57.

On election day, the state reports precinct level data.  I haven't attempted to do any precinct level analysis yet, and probably won't get around to it.

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Arkansas:



There are 5 AR PVI bellwether counties.  All but Craighead (Jonesboro) are fairly small and rural.  The 4 Republican-leaning bellwether counties are roughly R+0.5 to R+0.7; Little River is D+0.5.

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California:



No big surprises here.  Most of the Coastal California is very red and inland areas very blue.   The three CA PVI counties are a mixed lot - Santa Barbara (R+0.79), a coastal county with a city of the same name that is home to a lot of college students studying in the nearby university, Alpine (R+0.09), a small county in the Sierra Nevada ski country that's as far removed from the coast as can be, and Imperial (R+0.48), an inland, heavily Hispanic farming county with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.  

Suffolk University's bellwether county, San Benito, just missed the cut.

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Colorado:



The map of Central Colorado is Colorful, the sparsely-populated Eastern and Western edges, fairly blue.  The CO PVI bellwether counties stretch from Jefferson (R+0.12) and Broomfield (D+0.69) in the Denver suburbs to tiny Ouray County (R+0.01) in the Rockies.  Ouray County only has a handful of precincts, so if it's all in first, it might just tell us something before we can gauge the Jefferson County tea leaves.

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Connecticut:



Like most New England States, Connecticut reports results by town.  County-level data is pretty much irrelevant.  Connecticut has abolished its county governments.

There are 22 potential CT PVI bellwethers, stretching from Springfield, MA suburb of Enfield to Ansonia in the Naugatuck Valley.  That's far too many towns to name - but should provide a pretty quick indication of who is most likely to win come election day.

Suffolk University's 2006 bellwether, Plainfield, near the RI border, is R+4.64.  It was a better bellwether in 2006 than 2004 or 2008.

County Subdivisions Undefined refers to the water in the Long Island Sound.  Nobody lives there.

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Delaware:



Delaware has 3 counties, none of whose DE PVIs is remotely interesting.  New Castle is overwhelmingly Democratic; Sussex overwhelmingly Republican and Kent pretty darn Republican, save the areas around the state capital of Dover.  

The bellwether story is best told by looking at lower house districts.  Unlike the AP, Delaware reported 2010 primary results by precincts, which are subdivisions of Representative Districts (RDs).  The primary results came in pretty quickly, though, meaning a closer analysis might not be necessary.

The RD bellwethers are RDs 7 and 11 north of Wilmington, RD 21 near Newark and RD 28 in eastern Kent County.  Their PVIs range from D+0.73 to R+0.44.  RDs 7 and 28 are closest to even.

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Florida:



The FL PVI map pretty much confirms that North Florida is the South and South Florida is North.  , Not surprisingly, two of the three FL PVI bellwether counties are somewhere in the middle - Hillsborough (D+0.64), home to Tampa, Flagler (D+0.26), home of Palm Coast, one county north of Daytona Beach.  The other is tiny Madison County (R+0.65) on the Georgia border.

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Georgia:



The 7 GA PVI bellwether counties stretch from Newton and Douglas county in the Atlanta exurbs to Screven and Jenkins Counties near the South Carolina border to Early County in South Georgia.

Like in much of the South, early, incomplete returns from Georgia bellwethers probably don't tell us much.  All of the bellwethers have large African American populations, and African American precincts tend to vote differently than White precinct.

Note that the city of Macon isn't in Macon County.  It is in Bibb County.

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Hawaii:

There are 5 counties in Hawaii, but what fun would that be?  Hawaiian elections officials report results by lower house district (RD).  Hawaii has 51 RDs, the majority of them on Oahu (Honolulu).  Because Oahu is more densely populated than the Neighbor Islands, we need two maps.  First, an overall map of Hawaii.  Because Oahu is densely populated, the labels overlap:


Next, an Oahu closeup:


In general, Oahu is more Republican-leaning than the Neighbor Islands.  There are a exceptions, generally in the leeward resort areas on the west coast of Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii.  

There are 7 potential HI PVI bellwether RDs, 2 on Maui, 1 on the Big Island of Hawaii, and 4 on Oahu.  However, Obama's Hawaiian landslide may have made the results a bit more swingy than usual.  The best bellwether in both the 2004 and 2008 elections was RD-27, which includes Nuuanu, Puunui, Liliha and Alewa Heights north of Downtown Honolulu.  Its HI PVI is zero, swinging less than .02 percent from the statewide average in both 2004 and 2008.

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Idaho:



There is but one Idaho PVI bellwether - Kootenai County (Coeur d'Alene), near Spokane, Washington.  

Note that the state capital of Boise is in Ada County, not Boise County.  Super-red Blaine County is home to Sun Valley and other ski resorts.  Super-red Latah County is home to Moscow and the University of Idaho.

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Illinois:



What's there to say about Illinois?  Well, there's the almost D+15 Democratic stronghold of Cook County (Chicago) - and there's the rest of the state.  Only one other county, Rock Island, in the Quad Cities metro, has a D+ IL PVI - and it's one of three IL PVI bellwethers with a IL PVI of almost D+1, which is one point lower because it swung slightly against Obama compared to the rest of the state.   That swing is not entirely Rock Island's fault, as Obama's very large home county, Cook swung in the opposite direction.

The other IL PVI bellwethers are St. Clair County - a suburb of St. Louis - and Jackson County, home of Carbondale and Southern Illinois University.

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Indiana:



All four of the IN PVI bellwethers are in Southern Indiana.  Rural Spencer and Sullivan Counties are the best of the four bellwethers, not swinging much from 2008 to 2004.  Clark County (Jeffersonville), across the Ohio River from Louisville,  is not that great a bellwether - it swung heavily against Obama compared to the rest of the state.  There was a similar pattern in rural Crawford County.  

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Iowa:



I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about the 10 Iowa PVI counties - they're fairly small (all cast fewer than 20,000 votes in the 2008 election), rural and central.  A number of them are near the county that includes Des Moines (Polk).  

Uber-red Johnson County is home to Iowa City and the University of Iowa.  Sioux City is in Woodbury County, not uber-blue Sioux County.

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Kansas:



No surprise here: the further west you go, the bluer Kansas gets.  There are 3 KS PVI bellwethers - Sedgwick, home of Wichita and its thriving aerospace industry, Jefferson, a largely rural county between Topeka and Leavenworth, and Geary, just south of the university town of Manhattan, and home to part of Fort Riley.

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Kentucky:



Of the 6 KY PVI bellwethers, Perry County (Hazard) in the Appalachians had a huge double-digit swing away ftom the Democrats compared to the rest of the state - and simply can't be trusted.  Daviess County's (Owensboro) swing TOWARD the Democrats was noticeable, but much less pronounced.  The other 4 counties - all fairly rural with fewer than 20,000 votes cast in 2008 - are better KY PVI bellwethers.  Woodford had the least pronounced swing.

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Louisiana:



Two of the 3 LA PVI bellwether parishes aren't really much of one - Rural Lincoln and Ayoyelles Counties experienced huge swings relative to the rest of the state in 2008.  St. Mary (Morgan City) didn't experience as much of a swing, and might be a better barometer than the other two - if the BP oil spill didn't further turn this coastal parish further against the Obama administration compared to the rest of the state.

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Maryland:



There is no MD PVI bellwether county.  The state is very polarized between Baltimore and the immediate DC suburbs and the rest of the state.  the suburban/exurban Baltimore and Washington counties come closest to even.  Howard County has the lowest MD PVI - about R+2.

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Missouri:



The state is a lot more red than blue, largely due to the Democratic-leaning Kansas City and St. Louis city and metro area.  Three of the MO PVI bellwethers are on the west side of the state -  Clay County, KC's northern suburbs, rural Ray County and Buchanan County, home of the city of St. Joseph and Missouri Western State College.  If the results report data for Kansas City and suburban Jackson County separately, suburban Jackson County is a good MO PVI bellwether as well.  All but Ray didn't swing much from 2008 to 2004 relative to the rest of the state.

The other 3 bellwethers are fairly rural - Iron and St. Francois Counties in Southeast Missouri and Clark County at the Northeast corner of the state.  Clark had a bit of a swing, though.

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Nevada:



When it comes to Nevada, there's only one real NV PVI bellwether county: Washoe (Reno), with a NV PVI of R+0.38.  And there's only one county that leans Democratic compared to the rest of the state: Clark (Las Vegas) D+3.54.  Luckily for Democrats, about 2 out of every 3 registered voters live in Clark County.

Nationally, Nevada is a D+1 state.

I might eventually be able to break down Clark County by Assembly District.  But that's on the back burner for now.  I don't think results are released by AD on election night, anyway.

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New Hampshire:



New Hampshire is one of those New England states that reports results by town.  For this map, I've turned off the labels for all the towns, and turned them on only for the NH PVI bellwethers.  Any map with town labels is pretty unreadable, anyway.

Even without town names, a definite PVI pattern does emerge - towns along the Connecticut River Valley are generally deeper red - like Hanover, home of Dartmouth.  Of the bigger towns, Manchester and  Rochester are actually bellwethers, while Concord, Keene and Portsmouth are a deeper shade of red.  Nashua has a less than 3-point Democratic tilt when compared with the statewide average.

Towns in gray don't have polls.

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New York:



There is but one NY PVI bellwether county - Westchester, New York City's immediate northern suburban county.  Unfortunately, it also tends to be one of the slowest to report - and early results may or may not be reflective of the final outcome, depending on which areas of the county report.  

There are no real surprises here.  4 of the 5 boroughs of NYC are deep red, with Staten Island blue and Queens the least red of the red.  The only Upstate counties with a relative Democratic tilt are the capital city's county, Albany, and Tompkins County, home to Ithaca and Cornell University.  The three large upstate counties (Erie (Buffalo), Monroe (Rochester), Onondaga (Syracuse)) and the three north country counties along the Canadian border are only a light shade of blue, along with Ulster County, home of the hippie community of New Paltz.

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North Carolina:



North Carolina's 8 NC PVI bellwether counties are a varied bunch.  The only one with over 100,000 voters in the 2008 election was New Hanover (Wilmington).

Like in much of the south, some of the PVI bellwether counties experienced great swings compared to the rest of the state and really aren't very good bellwethers.   In particular, rural Columbus County had a 10 point swing away from the Democrats in 2008.  Yancey County was almost as bad.  The NC PVI bellwethers without much swing relative to the rest of the state were Lenoir, Franklin and the aforementioned New Hanover.