Comparing raw votes totals of Senators from different years

[politicallefty]

I know this is the Congressional board, but this topic seems to be covering other elections as well. (I'm not sure how Miles is making his maps, so I used the typical Atlas format.)

I wanted to try some variations on the gubernatorial elections in California from 2010 and 2014. Considering the very significant drop in turnout in CA from 2010 to 2014, the results are quite interesting:



Brown '14 4,388,368  51.53%
Whitman   4,127,371  48.47%

Surprisingly, compared to the 2010 map, the only county that changes is San Joaquin. Even with the sizable drop in turnout, typically Republican-leaning Del Norte County sticks with Jerry Brown. (That really is one county in California that remains quite enigmatic to me above all others.)



Brown '10 5,428,458 64.95%
Kashkari   2,929,213 35.05%

This is honestly a lot closer to the map I was expecting for this year. If Jerry Brown had campaigned for himself and got his voters to turn out in force, he could've blown out records in California. This map is almost identical to Obama/McCain in terms of results (the only exception being Del Norte voting Brown). Adding to his victory this year, Brown would pick up Del Norte, Trinity, Butte, Fresno, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties. Brown gets close to 90% in SF and hits 75% in LA County. Orange County is within a 2.4% margin. Brown also runs very strong in the Sierra Nevada foothills, holding Tuolumne County to a 35-vote margin. Four counties are at D>80% (SF, Alameda, Marin, and Santa Cruz).