The latest book to incorporate material from the Atlas is Anthony Fairfax’s The Democratic Trend Phenomena. The paperback book is an analytical work with a decent amount of statistical mathematics with the goal of proving a predictable trend in the popular vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

From the Author: “The goal of forecasting the outcome of U.S. presidential elections has been around for decades. However, the belief is that predicting, especially the popular vote, with a high degree of accuracy is difficult due to different national or even local conditions that change with each election (e.g. economic, social, political, and global changes).”

“Nonetheless, over the last three decades there exists a little known exception to the rule pertaining to forecasting presidential elections. The exception is that the popular vote for the Democratic candidate for president has trended in a predictable pattern since 1980. If the election of 1976 is disregarded the trend is revealed to actually begin in 1972.”

“This unique predictability has been deemed by the author as, The Democratic Trend Phenomena. This book describes the cause of the phenomena, measures the accuracy, and outlines the future effects.”

On the acknowledgements on page ix: “Additional thanks to David Leip who provided critical election data during the development of this book”

The book sells on Amazon for $10.17.

The map depicting the results for President in the state of New York by township for the 2004 General Election is now complete. New York is one of the states that allocates all ballot types to the appropriate precinct. Therefore, the results by city and township are exact.

The image shown to the right has 218 municipalities won by Kerry (22%) and 779 by Bush (78%). There were no ties in 2004. Kerry’s best municipality is Bronx Borough with 82.8%. Kerry received the lowest percentage in the Town of Jasper (Steuben County) with only 17.21%. Bush’s top location is the Town of Morehouse (Hamilton County) with 81.6% (71 votes to Kerry’s 15). Bush’s worst locality is the college city of Ithaca (Tompkins County) where Nader picked up 3.1% leaving Bush with only 15.5%. Some interesting statistics:

• Kerry Municipalities: Average Votes Cast: 23,227; Median Votes Cast: 4,331
• Bush Municpalities: Average Votes Cast: 2,994; Median Votes Cast: 1,212

As was evident in 2000, Bush carries many more of the rural, low-population townships, while Kerry scores solidly in the cities. To wit, in Kerry’s top 10 are four of the New York City Boroughs, the cities of Buffalo and Albany, as well as the City of Mount Vernon (Westchester county). These seven municipalities cast almost 2.5 million votes for President and rack up a margin of 1,354,849 votes for Kerry (this is, remarkably, about 3,000 votes more than Kerry’s state-wide margin of 1,351,713). The remaining three in the top 10 are the City of Ithaca, the surrounding the Town of Ithaca, and the relatively small Town of Woodstock (of 1960s fame in Ulster county) with 4,072 ballots cast. By contrast, Bush’s top 10 have an average total votes cast of 490 with names that are not widely known (All in Hamilton, Allegany, and Steuben Counties).

A larger township map as well as township data are available to members (New York by City and Town). In addition, the county-township maps are also available to members on each of the New York county summary pages such as my original home county of Ononadaga! Enjoy.

Today is election day 2005. Although an off-year for most (meaning that there are not many high-profile positions up for election), there are a number of important local offices to be filled as well as initiatives around the country to be voted on. Two of the bigger elections are the Gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. The results of these elections will be availalbe in the special Gubernatorial section following the release of the returns (see NJ and VA).