I've had that look at Nevada. I didn't actually go through the precincts (except in two cases, see below) - why are Obama's vote totals 52 pages below everyone else's with the precinct not even named again, that's not exactly userfriendly?
(j/k, it's a totally minor quibble and this is still great.) I only looked at the city/community sums at the bottom of the document, which don't suffer from that flaw.
Notes on places...
Clark County is as expected. "rural" should best be replaced with "unincorporated", of course. There are some pretty posh, pretty suburban areas within Las Vegas city limits, and some pretty poor areas including some pretty close to the city centre in the unincorporated country without, hence why Obama got a slightly larger margin from the "rural" parts (60-38) than the city (59-39). I knew that before. The smaller communities were interesting. What's the deal with Overton (69-27 Obama)? All the places around it (Bunkerville, Moapa, Moapa Valley, Mesquite) are for McCain, some quite heavily. Searchlight 52-42 McCain is disappointing, but could be worse.
Washoe; still amazed at quite how big Obama won it (and still a little surprised it didn't swing more 2000 to 2004, actually.) Obama won the cities 60-38 and 56-42 (Reno and Sparks respectively.) Interesting separation of the county into "townships" there. These seem to be divisions used only by the county and not recognized by the state. I take it Incline Village is by Lake Tahoe, Verdi is the western outskirts of Reno-Sparks and Sparks township the eastern. McCain won only Verdi, by 10 points. The other two went to Obama by 2 and 5 respectively. Two rural townships with tiny populations, Gerlach (66-30 McCain) must be the rural north and Wandsworth (72-27 Obama) is of course basically Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation.
elsewhere; A number of counties conform to stereotypical expectations (main town for McCain, but by somewhat smaller margin than rural surrounds). This goes for Churchill, Humboldt, Lander, Lincoln, White Pine. (In Esmeralda, it's basically a wash - the town is minimally more Republican than the remainder. But nobody lives in Esmeralda County, really.) There are a large number of exceptions though, most of them readily explained.
Douglas County: Gardnerville, Minden and Genoa vote for McCain by 16, 17 and 33 while the balance does so by only 14. The three towns are quite small and situated in the Carson Valley. I think the majority of the population is over on Lake Tahoe by now.
Elko County: Elko itself and the small towns of Carlin and Wells conform to the stereotype, actually, but West Wendover over on the Utah line almost went Democrat (48-46 McCain). West Wendover is where Wasatch Front Mormons go hit the casinos.
Eureka County: Town of Eureka gave McCain a whopping 80%, his best result in the data set. Rural parts gave him "only" 65. The town is more than half the county; it was a mining town once but is growing fast now after decades of seemingly terminal decline. Anyhow, the only explanation I have is that the population balance is concentrated far from Eureka at the north end of the county near I-80, and votes similar to other areas there. (I thought Eureka might be an LDS dominated place, but I checked the ARDA and it's not.)
Lyon County: divided into areas much like Washoe. Nice. Much of the county votes quite uniformly - the sprawl at Dayton (near to Carson City) and Fernley (on I80 and thus nearest to Reno-Sparks) are the largest places, both of these and the smaller northern towns of Stagecoach and Silver Springs in between and Mound House between Dayton and Carson have McCain margins of 13 to 16 points. The area around the county seat of Yerington in the geographical center is 62-35 McCain, the Smith Valley in the south 73-24 but quite rural. The odd place out is Silver City, a small community on the road from Dayton to Virginia City and a whopping 73% for Obama. Must be some kind of hippie enclave. Wikipedia is silent on it, though, although elsewhere on the net it's described as a ghost town.
Mineral: The county seat of Hawthorne has three quarters of the voters and is 52-43 McCain. The rural parts are actually 57-40 for Obama. They're also 40% Native American though (if the precincts' definition of Hawthorne is the same as the Census Bureau's, which I doubt. The real figure is thus quite possibly several points higher) which explains things. I checked precincts, and bingo. There are five rural precincts, one of them named for the Walker River Reservation's main town of Schurz. That was 78% Democrat. The remaining four summed are 60% Republican, casting about the same combined vote (one of them had just two voters. Apparently the county didn't want to dare the people still living at
Montgomery Pass to drive the 30-odd miles to the nearest inhabited place.)
Nye: Conforms to stereotype, I just wanted to remark on how large a share of the county Pahrump has grown to be. 84% of the vote. (McCain won it by 10, remainder by 30-odd.) If current trends continue - big if - watch this county flip Democrat pretty soon. Of course, Nye is also famous for voting for Ron Paul in the Republican primaries.
Pershing: Obama actually won Lovelock (by six points). Huge gap between the town and the rural parts (McCain by 37). No idea why.
Storey: Virginia City is Republican by 15 points. Gold Hill went for Obama by 5. Rural parts went for Obama by 1. I looked at precincts. There are two in Virginia City, one much smaller than the other. Obama won the small one by 3, got crushed by 22 in the other. What is this?
The "rural" balance is made up of 3 precincts (Gold Hill between VC and Silver City is just one precinct.) "Rainbow" went for Obama by 11, "Mark Twain" for McCain by 8. Google Maps doesn't even know these places. Is there some sprawl across the Washoe County line or are the inhabited areas staying on their side of the line as of yet? The last precinct was simply called "rural" and was tiny and very heavily Republican.
