Miles' Election Map Thread

[Lief 🗽]

Funny you say that. Roberts release an internal poll earlier this week showing the race as a dead heat: http://votejenniferroberts.com/new-poll-shows-race-a-dead-heat/

[Miles]

Well, both Roberts and Pittenger are well known in the district. Roberts has been on the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners for 8 years and Pittenger represented southern Charlotte in the State Senate.

That said, Myrick always overperformed the Republican bend of this district, and I don't think all of her unique strength will carry over to Pittenger. Also, I think Roberts was as good a Democrat as we could have run here.

Hagan came within 4 points of Dole there in 2008, losing 50-46; for now, I see that as more or less Roberts' ceiling. The district is obviously trending Democrat, so maybe when Pittenger retires (or makes a gaffe) the Democrats could pick this up down the line.

The poll has Roberts winning the Mecklenburg part of the district by 11, which I'm not sure I buy. Obama lost the Mecklenburg portion by a few tenths of a percentage point; Pittenger beat Dalton there by 12 points in 2008. Pittenger also got 68% in the Union part and 65% in Iredell in 2008, so I think its reasonable that he'll at least duplicate those margins this year.

Looking at the composition of the district, 71% of the vote comes from Mecklenburg, 14% from Union and 15% from Iredell.

If Pittenger matches his 2008 margins in Union and Iredell, and Roberts actually wins Mecklenburg by 10 points, Pittenger still wins 50-49.

[Miles]

According to DRA, the Republican average of the Mecklenburg chunk of NC-09 is 57%, though it was only 50% McCain. Pretty tough sledding. Don't forget that Pittenger had no problem slapping down $2 million of his own wealth to win the nomination.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see Roberts win (I'll be voting for her), but I'm skeptical that this will end up being close.

[Miles]

If there are any other insomniacs creative souls like myself who want to make precinct maps for NC, I hope this will help. I've uploaded my basic shape templates for each CD as well as a map of the entire state (where I've integrated the split precincts).

Just follow the links here, copy the maps into Paint/Paint.Net and you're good to start coloring.

This are for my standard-scale maps, though I'll have an even larger version coming down the pipe.


CD1
CD2
CD3
CD4
CD5
CD6
CD7
CD8
CD9
CD10
CD11
CD12
CD13


The individual districts should all be consistent with this statewide map (colors based on the standard DRA scheme):

[Miles]

Southeastern NC is one of my personal favorite places, electorally speaking; its an area where conservaDems, like Kissell and McIntyre do very well. So, I always watch results there especially closely.

Here's Senate District 13, consisting of Robeson and Columbus counties. Despite the new VRA Senate districts and vote-packing by the Republicans, this is still the most heavily Democratic Senate district; less than 13% of voters in this district are registered Republicans.

I'm pretty sure that this was also the most pro-Amendment 1 district. Between the Robeson and Columbus counties, it passed with 85.8%.

I thought the visual contrast between Amendment 1's 72-point win and the registration gap (72-13 Democratic) would be interesting.

[Miles]

It actually passed with less than 60% in CD6!



This supports my observation of higher turnout in the more educated areas. Between Guilford, Orange and Durham Counties, it narrowly failed 50.4-40.6. Likewise, those three counties collectively make up about 46% of the district but they cast 54.6% of the ballots.

[Miles]

[Miles]

With all 13 CDs!

[Miles]

I've done the entire statewide precinct map, but does anyone know a website I can use to upload a 6600 X 2830 pixel image?

[Miles]

'And here we go:



Link.

[Miles]

[nclib]

'And here we go:



Link.

That map really shows how dominant Amendment One was in rural areas. Only 40 (of 100) counties had even a single precinct against it.

In addition to the 8 counties that voted against (Orange, Durham, Wake, Mecklenburg, Chatham, Buncombe, Watauga, Dare), here are the others with the likely area in opposition to the amendment, in order of overall pro-gay vote:

Guilford   (Greensboro)
New Hanover   (Wilmington, coast)
Forsyth   (Winston-Salem)
Polk   (Tryon (artsy community))
Pitt   (Greenville (East Carolina U.))
Jackson   (Cullowhee (Western Carolina U.))
Transylvania   
Warren   
Moore   
Northampton   
Alamance   (Burlington/Elon)
Hyde   (coast)
Washington   (coast)
Craven   (New Bern, coast)
Pasquotank   (coast)
Hoke   
Carteret   (coast)
Franklin   
Henderson   
Halifax   
Currituck   (coast)
Cumberland   (Fayetteville)
Wilson   (Wilson)
Beaufort   (coast)
Nash   (Rocky Mount)
Lenoir   (Kinston)
Bertie   (coast)
Catawba   (Hickory)
Rowan   (Salisbury)
Davidson   (Thomasville)
Burke   
Stanly

Any comments about the others--perhaps a fluke in some cases...

[homelycooking]

If there are any other insomniacs creative souls like myself who want to make precinct maps for NC, I hope this will help.

For all our sakes, Miles, I hope your insomnia is never cured.

[Skill and Chance]

With all 13 CDs!

Very interesting map.  It looks like the GOP map drawers may have underestimated the amount of demographic change in the Charlotte suburbs.  That district doesn't look bad midterm proof at all. 

It also looks like FOR performed almost exactly at 2008 McCain levels in the 13th?

[Miles]

As usual, thanks to everyone for their input!

I've gotten a request to sort out the Amendment 1 results by the old CDs, so I'll be rolling those out as my next batch of maps (in addition to some other miscellaneous projects I'm working on!).

[Miles]

This was the clown car highly-competitive Republican primary to replace Bart Gordon. I think this is a pretty neat map. 'Good thing for Black that Rutherford County was excised from the new district.

[Miles]

Since the old iteration of the 11th included the entirety of Bumcombe county, it was considerably more Against than the Republican version. Comparing the districts, it dropped from 71% For, under the new map, to 63% under the old lines, still a few points more conservative than the state.

[Miles]

Amendment 1 passed in the old 9th by a noticeably larger margin than it did in the new 9th; it passed by 14% in the former versus 6% in the latter. These are the purely geographic reasons that I can think of to account for the difference:

-The old 9th was less Mecklenburg-centric. 60% of its population came from Mecklenburg but it when it was redrawn, that number was up to 70%.

-The new 9th contains less of Union county. Likewise, the Union precicnts that the new 9th retained were collectively less For (69%) than the old 9th's chunk of Union (73%).

-The new 9th traded out 75.5% For Gaston precincts in favor of slightly more liberal Iredell precincts, 73.3%.

[Miles]

Any comments about the others--perhaps a fluke in some cases...

Something that I noticed was the county discrepancy in Rocky Mount. It passed by relatively lukewarm margins in the Edgecombe half of the city but passed in a landslide in the Nash precincts.

[Miles]

Well, since the old and new CD2 only share 29% of precincts, not much use in comparing them. Though, while the new CD2 is slightly more conservative than the state, Amendment passed by a heftier 2:1 in the old version.

[Miles]

Here's how the statewide map is looking so far under the old lines:

[Miles]

I crunched the numbers for a few more districts (I'll try to have the actual individual CD maps out this week):




-The old 10th actually ties the new 8th in terms of highest % For (77.4%).

-The new 5th is a few points more liberal, as it loses Surry county but picks up more of Forsyth.

-The 7th is more or less unchanged. The old version was 69.6% and the new one is 69.9%. While the old one included all of New Hanover, liberal Wilmington was cancelled out by the presence of 86% For Robeson county.

[Miles]

Here's what it looks like when a Republican wins a D+25 district:

[Gass3268]

Here's what it looks like when a Republican wins a D+25 district:

So it looks like Cao did well with liberal whites, I'm I reading that right?

[Miles]

So it looks like Cao did well with liberal whites, I'm I reading that right?

Yeah, there were quite a few >70% Obama white-majority precincts that Cao won.