The site has a new feature - timelines for the 2008 Republican and Democratic Primaries.  These pages show a summary of all the contests in chronological order, including vote percentages, estimated delegates, winning candidates, summary national map, pie charts, and county-map icons.  Links are provided for each state summary results page.  The timelines will automatically update following each event.

I have created a new method for posting election results in Blogs - an interactive election map “widget” - a small snipet that can be placed in the code section of a blog post. The map has mouse-over interactivity, including a county-level imagemap with the floating text box of results plus links to more detailed returns. Below is an example comparing the 2004 General Election Result in South Carolina to the 2008 Republican Primary in South Carolina.

The link for this code may be seen by clicking on the link titled “Blog Interactive Map Widget Code for this Contest” in the “Election Tools” section of any state (or national) summary page. The code can then be placed in an uselectionatlas.org weblog post (note in order to use this widget, you need to enable the pageview plugin on the “Plugins” tab in the admin section of you weblog. At this time, this widget can’t be used on other weblogs since iframes are generally not permitted using most blogging software.

The unofficial results are in from the competitive 2006 Republican Primary for Seante in Rhode Island. In this race, incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee was challenged by Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey. The unofficial result published by the Rhode Island Board of Elections is: Chafee (i) 34,407 (54.22%); Laffey 29,052 (45.78%), a margin of about 8 percentage points.

The township map reveals the strength of each candidate. Laffey performed best in the North (Providence County) outside the city. His best municipality is the town of Johnston where he won 62.8% of the vote. In his home-town city of Cranston, he received his largest vote margin of 447 votes, capturing 52.5% of the vote. Chafee had his strength in the city of Providence and the south of the state (Bristol, Newport and Washington Counties). His best municipaility is the town of New Shoreham (Block Island) where he received 78.3% of the vote. Chafee received his largest vote margin in the City of Warwick - 2,134 votes where he won 62.3% to 37.6%.

An interesting statistic with regard to the lack of Republican Strength in Rhode Island - in the City of Providence (2000 Voting-Age Population of 128,341 - almost twice as many people as in Warwick, the second largest city): the total number of votes cast in the Republican primary was 2,941 votes, 1/5th the 14,861 votes cast in a far-less-competitive Democratic Primary.

The section of the Atlas that includes primary returns for US President have been updated to include official results from Presidential Primaries in the 2004 Democratic contest (county maps, congressional district maps, and data). All caucus events and several primary events were run by the Democratic party and therefore these results are obtained from the respective state Democratic Party organizations (and not from official state election agencies). In some cases, these data are incomplete due to the inability to obtain final and complete data from the state parties. A complete spreadsheet of the data is available for purchase from the store page.

The preliminary results of the 2006 Connecticut Senatorial Primary between incumbent Democrat Joseph Lieberman and challenger Ned Lamont are in. With 99.6% of the precincts having reported, Lamont defeats Lieberman 146,065 to 136,150 (51.8% to 48.2%). This is a more narrow margin than the more recent polls by Rasmussen and Quinnipiac University had predicted.
The preliminary town results map (shown at right) shows the relative strenghts of each of the two Democratic candidates. Much of the state was relatively evenly split. Lieberman was strongest in the route 8 corridor - West Haven, Derby, Ansonia up through Naugatuck, Waterbury and Thomaston. Lamont’s strength was centered in the northwestern portion of the state (Litchfield County - with his strongest town Cornwall), the south near Lyme, the northeast near Mansfield, and Lamon’t hometown, Greenwich.

Last week, the Atlas underwent an expansion, adding Gubernatorial and Senatorial election results and integrating these data with the Presidential returns. There was already a special section for Gubernatorial results for a number of years - however the feature set for these data was limited. The site expansion makes available the complete Gubernatorial results from 1998 through 2005, including all the features already available for the Presidential returns (map comparisons, party maps and data, image-mapped county maps with county and township summary pages, customizable data tables, etc.). In addition, the first complete year of Senatorial results - 2004 - is also included (many thanks to True Democrat for contributing the data). Using the frames version for navagation, a new menu appears in the top frame at the right - allowing the user to select which election to view. In the no-frames version, new navigation appears at the bottom to select a different office.

Further integration of the data is planned - such as side-by-side map comparisons between offices for a given year, possible mouse-over maps, data comparisons, etc. Please send suggestions. If you would like to contribute state-wide election data (perhaps even other offices), please send an email. The newly-included election results may be access in the frames version or the no-frames version.

The New York project (first discussed in this weblog entry) has made a lot of progress. The township maps and data are now complete for all counties for the general elections of 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. The precinct data is now complete for all counties outside of the five New York City Boroughs for those four elections (New York City Borough precinct data is complete for 2000 and 2004). This was no small task as most counties required hand-entry of precinct data. In addition, the further complication of New York’s fusion system added an average of four more ballot lines per election. Overall this required a lot of number typing. For example, the counties of Erie, Monroe, and Nassau had a total of 2,897 precincts in 1992 (only to grow larger by 2004). With the exception of Monroe in 2004, all three of these counties required manual entry of the data between 1992 and 2004 from the canvass books (they are legal size documents about 3 cm thick). Total precincts for New York in 1992 are 9,764 (outside of NYC).

The New York township map for 1992 is partiularly interesting. Perot was very strong in Western New York, winning numerous towns in Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Wyoming, and Niagara counties (Perot finished second in Wyoming and Cattaraugus counties and a very close third in Niagara County). Perot also had a strong showing in central New York in an area up the I-81 corridor from Binghamton through Northern Jefferson County, having won a number of towns in the region. Perot placed well-enough in this region such that in most towns, the winning candidate received less than 40% of the vote. Bush was strong through the the Adirondacks, perifieral Catskills, and the Genesee River Vally counties (Steuben , Allegany, Livingston, Ontario, Yates, Genesee, Orleans, Wayne). Clinton had strong support in New York City and the large upstate cities (Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany), in the northern tier (St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties), Ithaca, and the central Catskills (Ulster and Sullivan Counties).

County-level township maps for all counties in these four years are now available on-line to members. Township data and precinct data is also available on-line to members. There are also detailed spreadsheets with boundary codes that include both unfused and fused data for the Presidential vote at the precinct, township, and county level. See the store page if for purchasing information on the spreadsheets.

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.

Cook County 2004

Cook County 2000

The Chicago metropolitan area, including Cook County and the surrounding five counties (Lake, Kane, McHenry, DuPage, and Will) dominates the state with 65.5% of the population. Winning this region goes a long way towards adding the state’s 21 electoral votes to one’s column. With the well-documented rural-urban split of support between Republicans and Democrats, Illinois poses a particular challenge for Republicans to overcome the heavily urban Chicago area. In 2004, Kerry won Illinois handily (55% to 44%), carrying Cook County 1,439,724 to 597,405 - a margin of almost 850,000 votes (41 percentage points!). Bush won the net returns from all the remaining Illinois Counties 1,748,541 to 1,451,826, a margin of about 300,000 votes - a figure that falls well short of overcoming Kerry’s 41 point margin in Cook County.

The trend in Illinois is also not good for the Repulicans. Although Bush increased his percentage in Illinois as a whole between 2000 and 2004 from 42.6% to 44.5% (or 1.9 points), this figure is a full point below his national average (to 50.7% from 47.8% or 2.9 points). In Cook County, Bush’s share of the vote fell one half of a percentage point to 28.7%. The decrease in popularity coupled with an increase in turout added almost 100,000 votes to the Democratic margin between 2000 and 2004. In addition, Bush lost six of the suburban townships in 2004 that he won in 2000 (he didn’t win any that he lost in 2000). Only two townships increased Bush’s margin between 2000 and 2004 (Orland and Lemont - two of the furthest townships from Chicago - in the southwest portion of Cook County).

The Atlas is in the proces of adding additional precinct and township data for Illinois in 2004. DuPage, Kane, Lake, and Sangamon are now available (in addition to Cook) for those interested in further study.

As the off-year general election approaches, I’ve added the 2001 Gubernatorial Election results to the special Gubernatorial section. Only two states hold elections for the top statewide executive office in the year after the Presidential Election (Virginia and New Jersey). Subsequent to the casting of ballots on November 8, 2005, the Atlas will add the two states’ returns for Governor. Pictured above right is the county-wide map of returns for Governor for the Commonwealth of Virginia in the 2001 Gubernatorial Election where Democrat Mark Warner defeated Republican Mark Earley 52% to 47%. (Democratic wins in Red, Republican in Blue)