What's up with Alaska's election districts?

[Joe Republic]

Apparently Alaska doesn't run its election results by county any more.  Instead they have four election regions, which Dave doesn't seem to have maps of as yet.  Anybody know why this was changed over, and where we can find maps of these regions?

[Colin]

Apparently Alaska doesn't run its election results by county any more.  Instead they have four election regions, which Dave doesn't seem to have maps of as yet.  Anybody know why this was changed over, and where we can find maps of these regions?

Because Alaska doesn't have counties. In its more populated areas there are boroughs which act as counties. These boroughs have a city or town at their centre and sometimes serve as the town government as well but theyare as large, or larger, than some states. In the lesser populated areas, the Bush, there are no counties basically its just one huge unicorporated area. The closest thing there is what are called Census Districts which are just arbitrary districts drawn by the Census Bureau to catalogue the data from these remote places.

[Joe Republic]

At some point between the 2000 and 2004 elections, Alaska went from having 40 'election districts' to just 4.  Dave already has maps of Alaska's results for 1992-2000, but not for 2004.  I was wondering if anybody could find a map of these four new districts.

[jimrtex]

At some point between the 2000 and 2004 elections, Alaska went from having 40 'election districts' to just 4.  Dave already has maps of Alaska's results for 1992-2000, but not for 2004.  I was wondering if anybody could find a map of these four new districts.

The 40 "election districts" are the state representative districts.  These are simply collections of precincts used for electing representatives.  They are not permanent and could change by decade.

In Alaska, the Division of Elections is under the Lt.Governor (rather than the Secretary of State as in many states).

Division of Elections

The 2004 election results are here, with an index to the results for each representative district.

2004 results by district

Current district maps

Senate districs are lettered, and there are two representative districts per senate district, so something like 1-A is Representative District 1 (and also a part of Senate District A.

Alaska's judicial system is divided into 4 judicial districts, but I don't think this is what you want.

Judicial Districts

There are 4 election regions (under the statewide Division of Elections).  They appear to be fairly new, and perhaps only related to compliance with the federal HAVA act - that is where I found them on the DoE site.  Other than the location of the 4 regional offices (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome) the only breakout by "region" was in the registration statistics.

Registration Statistics

Here the statistics are gathered by precinct within representative districts, with summary totals for each region.

Region I - (1-5) Pacific Coast: Panhandle, Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island, western short ok Cook Inlet.

Region II (13-32) Anchorage and areas to the fairly immediate north.

Region III (6-12) Interior, 3 districts are in immediate Fairbanks area, and others come in close.

Region IV (37-40) Arctic Coast: North Slope south to include Aleutians.

In general, counties administer state law (issuing licenses for the state, maintaining property records, administering justice (sheriff and courts), conducting elections.  In many areas, the HQ building for a county is known as the courthouse.  County officials are usually locally elected.

Over time, counties in some states have been given the authority to provide various services (roads, libraries, fire protection, water, planning and zoning, etc.)

In the continental US, the ideal size for a county was considered to be small enough that a resident could travel to the county seat, do his business at the court house, and get back to his farm before nightfall.  As you get further west, this ideal was less likely to be met as population density decreased (or by the time counties were organized automobiles were becoming available).

In Alaska, because of its huge areas, it wouldn't make sense to have counties.  So they don't in some areas there are boroughs and cities, but they don't provide complete coverage of the state.  Many activities that are provided by counties elsewhere, are provided directly by the state, though of course through local offices.

[minionofmidas]

The reason for the change in the Atlas hasn't been touched on yet. It's quite simple really:
For 2000 and 1996 and such, Alaska published results for day voting by precinct, for postal and "question" (same thing called "provisional" elsewhere, I think) voting by State House District. The 40 State House Districts were therefore the smallest unit for which exact election results were available.
For 2004, there was the additional option of early voting - and that was only reported by these four regions (actually it's even more complex than that. Most of it was reported by these regions, but some was broken further down. I haven't the slightest clue why.)
Therefore, exact figures per State House District are not available for 2004.

[minionofmidas]

Results excluding Early Votes are HERE.

[Nym90]

I agree with Joe Republic that it would be nice to see some sort of maps for Alaska showing Bush and Kerry's relative strength in areas of the state. Hopefully Dave can get something up for Alaska eventually. Also, hopefully eventually maps from 1988 and earlier too.

[minionofmidas]

You can see that

HERE.

[jimrtex]

The reason for the change in the Atlas hasn't been touched on yet. It's quite simple really:
For 2000 and 1996 and such, Alaska published results for day voting by precinct, for postal and "question" (same thing called "provisional" elsewhere, I think) voting by State House District. The 40 State House Districts were therefore the smallest unit for which exact election results were available.
For 2004, there was the additional option of early voting - and that was only reported by these four regions (actually it's even more complex than that. Most of it was reported by these regions, but some was broken further down. I haven't the slightest clue why.)
Therefore, exact figures per State House District are not available for 2004.

I think I understand now.

The representative district reports have election day votes by precinct, plus absentee and provisional votes by district.  But they also include the early voting results by region.  And there are some other categories that vary by district.  For example House Districts 1 to 5 have something called HD1-5.   But House Districts 1 and 2, have HD1-2.  And House District has HD1-5, HD5, and HD5-3.

These categories are repeated from district to district, so that the same R1 early voting results are repeated in Districts 1, 2, 3, etc.  And they are also totalled within the district.  So the totals for any district represent the votes from that district plus some other votes that might have been cast by the voters from that district.  Since the early voting results are by region or collections of districts, and fairly numerous, they mask the district results.

[minionofmidas]

Yes, exactly. That's why Dave didn't put them on the Atlas.

[Cubby]

Apparently Alaska doesn't run its election results by county any more.  Instead they have four election regions, which Dave doesn't seem to have maps of as yet.  Anybody know why this was changed over, and where we can find maps of these regions?

Because Alaska doesn't have counties. In its more populated areas there are boroughs which act as counties. These boroughs have a city or town at their centre and sometimes serve as the town government as well but theyare as large, or larger, than some states. In the lesser populated areas, the Bush, there are no counties basically its just one huge unicorporated area. The closest thing there is what are called Census Districts which are just arbitrary districts drawn by the Census Bureau to catalogue the data from these remote places.

It has 27 Boroughs that cover the whole state:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/alaska_map.html

I remember being surprised that Kerry did better than Gore in Alaska. I thought that with the entire Democratic Party being opposed to ANWR drilling, even some AK Dems would vote against him. On my prediction map I had Alaska at 70%+

[jimrtex]

Because Alaska doesn't have counties. In its more populated areas there are boroughs which act as counties. These boroughs have a city or town at their centre and sometimes serve as the town government as well but theyare as large, or larger, than some states. In the lesser populated areas, the Bush, there are no counties basically its just one huge unicorporated area. The closest thing there is what are called Census Districts which are just arbitrary districts drawn by the Census Bureau to catalogue the data from these remote places.

It has 27 Boroughs that cover the whole state:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/alaska_map.html

Alaska has 16 boroughs; municipalities; or citiy and boroughs; and 11 census areas.  These 27 areas are treated as county equivalents by the Census Bureau for data presentation purposes.   Census areas are defined in cooperation between the State of Alaska and the Census Bureau for statistical purposes.

From time to time, new boroughs have been organized and the census areas adjusted.  For example the Aleutians East Borough was organized from an area within the Aleutians Census Area.  The remnant of the census area was renamed to Aleutians West Census Area.

The boroughs are not exclusively more urban areas.  For example, the North Slope Borough has less than 7000 people, but is larger than all but 10 States.  About 60% of the population is in the Barrow area.

If you click on the various areas on the map linked above, you will see that some are designated as Borough, Municipality, or City and Borough; these are governmental units.  The others are designated as Census Area.

[Cubby]

Because Alaska doesn't have counties. In its more populated areas there are boroughs which act as counties. These boroughs have a city or town at their centre and sometimes serve as the town government as well but theyare as large, or larger, than some states. In the lesser populated areas, the Bush, there are no counties basically its just one huge unicorporated area. The closest thing there is what are called Census Districts which are just arbitrary districts drawn by the Census Bureau to catalogue the data from these remote places.

It has 27 Boroughs that cover the whole state:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/alaska_map.html

Alaska has 16 boroughs; municipalities; or citiy and boroughs; and 11 census areas.  These 27 areas are treated as county equivalents by the Census Bureau for data presentation purposes.   Census areas are defined in cooperation between the State of Alaska and the Census Bureau for statistical purposes.

From time to time, new boroughs have been organized and the census areas adjusted.  For example the Aleutians East Borough was organized from an area within the Aleutians Census Area.  The remnant of the census area was renamed to Aleutians West Census Area.

The boroughs are not exclusively more urban areas.  For example, the North Slope Borough has less than 7000 people, but is larger than all but 10 States.  About 60% of the population is in the Barrow area.

If you click on the various areas on the map linked above, you will see that some are designated as Borough, Municipality, or City and Borough; these are governmental units.  The others are designated as Census Area.

They have different names but aside from their local gov't structure, they seem the same as counties, since we're only using them as "county equivalents", like you said.

[minionofmidas]

Because Alaska doesn't have counties. In its more populated areas there are boroughs which act as counties. These boroughs have a city or town at their centre and sometimes serve as the town government as well but theyare as large, or larger, than some states. In the lesser populated areas, the Bush, there are no counties basically its just one huge unicorporated area. The closest thing there is what are called Census Districts which are just arbitrary districts drawn by the Census Bureau to catalogue the data from these remote places.

It has 27 Boroughs that cover the whole state:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/alaska_map.html

Alaska has 16 boroughs; municipalities; or citiy and boroughs; and 11 census areas.  These 27 areas are treated as county equivalents by the Census Bureau for data presentation purposes.   Census areas are defined in cooperation between the State of Alaska and the Census Bureau for statistical purposes.

From time to time, new boroughs have been organized and the census areas adjusted.  For example the Aleutians East Borough was organized from an area within the Aleutians Census Area.  The remnant of the census area was renamed to Aleutians West Census Area.

The boroughs are not exclusively more urban areas.  For example, the North Slope Borough has less than 7000 people, but is larger than all but 10 States.  About 60% of the population is in the Barrow area.

If you click on the various areas on the map linked above, you will see that some are designated as Borough, Municipality, or City and Borough; these are governmental units.  The others are designated as Census Area.

They have different names but aside from their local gov't structure, they seem the same as counties, since we're only using them as "county equivalents", like you said.

No, the Census Areas have no local gov't structure whatsoever. They are merely used as "county equivalents" by the US Census bureau, they have no other function.

[jimrtex]

No, the Census Areas have no local gov't structure whatsoever. They are merely used as "county equivalents" by the US Census bureau, they have no other function.

And the census bureau just uses them for statistical pursposes - for collecting data.

[minionofmidas]

No, the Census Areas have no local gov't structure whatsoever. They are merely used as "county equivalents" by the US Census bureau, they have no other function.

And the census bureau just uses them for statistical pursposes - for collecting data.

Well, that's all the census bureau uses real counties for as well.