Historic Alaska Presidential Results Megathread
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  Historic Alaska Presidential Results Megathread
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Author Topic: Historic Alaska Presidential Results Megathread  (Read 7412 times)
cinyc
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« on: January 19, 2018, 10:36:45 PM »

I've been working on creating historic Alaska maps by the election day precinct winner and total estimated Borough/Census Area (a.k.a. Alaska County Equivalent). Eventually, I hope to do map the Presidential general elections back to 1960 - but, for now, I've run into a roadblock in getting even the legal descriptions of the pre-1996 precincts.

Here's the maps of the 1996-2016 Election Day in-precinct vote. First, 1996 (Dole v. Clinton). This was Bill Clinton's reelection. Perot ran again, getting about 11% of the statewide ED vote, but not winning any precinct:



Next, 2000 (Bush v. Gore). Bush won handily, especially since Nader made inroads into many typically Democratic-leaning precincts. He actually won the Talkeetna, Girdwood and Haines Chilkat-Peninsula precincts. Buchanan supposedly won an precinct, but this might be an error:



The 2004 Bush v. Kerry race wasn't even close, as the map confirms. But because of the lack of a Nader split vote, Kerry won more precincts in traditionally Democratic-leaning areas, like Downtown Anchorage:



In 2008, John McCain and his Alaskan running mate, Sarah Palin, also won big:



Obama did better in his 2012 reelection campaign, cracking 40% of the election day vote. Rural Alaska really started swinging Democratic here:



Finally, the Trump 2016 map looks a lot like the 2012 map. Trump and Clinton's percentages suffered compared to 2012, as third party candidates received more of the vote. Johnson garnered over 6% of the election day in-precinct vote:

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cinyc
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« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2018, 10:37:07 PM »
« Edited: January 19, 2018, 10:44:11 PM by cinyc »

Here's a gif of the 1996-2016 Presidential Election Results maps, which illustrates how the map changed from cycle to cycle:

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cinyc
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« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2018, 10:37:41 PM »
« Edited: February 01, 2018, 08:33:58 PM by cinyc »

County Equivalent Maps:
1960:


1964:


1968:


1972:


1976:


1980:


1984:


1988:


1992:


1996:


2000:


2004 (ED Estimate only, for now):


2008:


2012:


2016:


GIF of 1960-2016:
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cinyc
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« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2018, 10:44:23 PM »
« Edited: January 28, 2018, 08:01:48 PM by cinyc »

Swing Maps:

1992-96:


1996-2000:


2000-04 (Election Day Vote):


2004-08 (Election Day Vote):


2008-12:


2012-16:


1996-2016 GIF:
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catographer
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« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2018, 11:03:18 PM »

Great work! Must've been difficult to find precinct data. Alaska is certainly the hardest state to map by far.
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catographer
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« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2018, 11:04:47 PM »

Very excited for county equivalents too!
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cinyc
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« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2018, 11:49:13 PM »

Great work! Must've been difficult to find precinct data. Alaska is certainly the hardest state to map by far.


Alaska precinct data is very easy to find - the Division of Elections' website has it for every election back to statehood. It's not in the greatest of formats, but I can format it. 2000 precinct data was mysteriously missing, but I found it on Archive.org.

What's difficult is finding historic shapefiles with precincts - or even the legal description of the pre-96 precincts.

So, I've hit a roadblock in making the 1992 election precinct map. The 1992 Alaska map was an interim one, which may or may not have been similar to 1996 and 2000. That should be a very interesting map, with Perot winning a good number of precincts. I can't think of a solution short of asking the Alaska Division of Elections for that info - if they even have it.

I also noticed an error with the 2008 map - the Prudhoe Bay precinct didn't exist in 08, and is showing up as water. I'll eventually get around to fixing that in the map and gif. It should be colored the same as its neighboring precinct to the east, with which it was combined.
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MT Treasurer
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« Reply #7 on: January 22, 2018, 01:28:35 PM »

Excellent work, thanks!

Looks like the AK Republican Party is in trouble in the long term.
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #8 on: January 22, 2018, 01:42:15 PM »

Excellent work, thanks!

Looks like the AK Republican Party is in trouble in the long term.

This is often said, but why?  I think cynic at least poked a legitimate hole in this idea in another thread:

Alaska actually slightly lost population in 2017, according to the state's estimates. Of the big boroughs/municipalities, only Anchorage-exurban Mat-Su grew. That's the Republican heartland of Alaska. Even Anchorage lost population, and is under 300,000 residents after going above that mark mid-decade.

I don't think Alaskan trends are as good for the Democrats as you think, particularly when you factor in that Alaskan Natives sometimes vote for the incumbent, not necessarily the Democrat.

And no, Alaska isn't one of the more unpredictable states. It's been carried by a Republican at the presidential level every year but the Johnson landslide of 1964.
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MT Treasurer
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« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2018, 06:48:31 PM »


It has trended D in every election since 2004, and Trump underperformed there in 2016 (even though his opponent was an awful fit for the state). The state has also gotten a lot more competitive at the state level as well. I'll believe AK acutally trending back to Rs when I see it.

We don’t really know what’s driving the population growth in the Anchorage exurbs, but these areas don’t seem to have gotten a lot more R in recent years either. I certainly hope I’m wrong, though.
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #10 on: January 27, 2018, 03:04:18 AM »


It has trended D in every election since 2004, and Trump underperformed there in 2016 (even though his opponent was an awful fit for the state). The state has also gotten a lot more competitive at the state level as well. I'll believe AK acutally trending back to Rs when I see it.

We don’t really know what’s driving the population growth in the Anchorage exurbs, but these areas don’t seem to have gotten a lot more R in recent years either. I certainly hope I’m wrong, though.

One thing I have noticed looking over the last five Presidential elections, the Democratic vote has not changed that much in raw numbers. In fact it has also declined since 2008, but only slightly.

The GOP number spiked in 2004 and again in 2008 for obvious reason, and has declined since but has remained stable at the same general number seen in 2000, 2012 and 2016.

   Donald J. Trump   Michael R. Pence   Republican   163,387   51.28%   3
   Hillary Clinton   Timothy Kaine   Democratic   116,454   36.55%   0

   Willard Mitt Romney   Paul Ryan   Republican   164,676   54.80%   3
   Barack H. Obama   Joseph R. Biden, Jr.   Democratic   122,640   40.81%   0

John S. McCain, III   Sarah Palin   Republican   193,841   59.42%   3
   Barack H. Obama   Joseph R. Biden, Jr.   Democratic   123,594   37.89%   0

George W. Bush   Richard Cheney   Republican   190,889   61.07%   3
   John Kerry   John Edwards   Democratic   111,025   35.52%   0

George W. Bush   Richard Cheney   Republican   167,398   58.62%   3
   Albert Gore Jr.   Joseph Lieberman   Democratic   79,004   27.67%   0
   Ralph Nader   Winona LaDuke   Green   28,747   10.07%   0

The Democrats have also lost votes in every election since 2008 in Alaska. In fact they have lost more votes than the Republicans have excluding the surge in 2004/2008
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cinyc
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« Reply #11 on: January 27, 2018, 05:50:24 PM »

I added the 1996-2016 County Equivalent estimated winner and swing maps + gifs in the posts above. Any maps involving 2004 only show election day votes, for now. The 2004 Early Votes were very strangely reported - by election region in most cases, and by groups of HDs sometimes. I can't reconcile the total reported early vote to the official total vote totals - yet.
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SingingAnalyst
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« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2018, 11:00:39 AM »

I read once that in 1980, Libertarian candidate Ed Clark received all 29 votes cast in Chicken, Alaska. Can anyone verify this? I think I read it in Reason magazine.
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cinyc
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« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2018, 12:32:26 PM »

I read once that in 1980, Libertarian candidate Ed Clark received all 29 votes cast in Chicken, Alaska. Can anyone verify this? I think I read it in Reason magazine.

That's false. Clark received 4 votes in Chicken in 1980 to Reagan's 18 and Carter's 2. So he beat Carter there.
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SingingAnalyst
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« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2018, 01:30:07 PM »

I read once that in 1980, Libertarian candidate Ed Clark received all 29 votes cast in Chicken, Alaska. Can anyone verify this? I think I read it in Reason magazine.

That's false. Clark received 4 votes in Chicken in 1980 to Reagan's 18 and Carter's 2. So he beat Carter there.
Thank you. (I guess fake news has been around for a while).
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cinyc
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« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2018, 08:00:56 PM »

The 1992 presidential election in Alaska was interesting. The winner there (Bush) was held to under 40% because Perot received over 28% of the vote. As the map below shows, Perot even won a county equivalent - Denali Borough:



Perot's statewide weakness was in rural areas off of the road network. He tended to do better in traditionally Republican areas like Mat-Su and Kenai:



Here's a similar map of the Bush and Clinton percentages by Alaska county equivalent:




The 1992-96 all-party county equivalent swing map shows wild swings toward both sides, probably due to Perot:


Unfortunately, I can't make a 1992 precinct map - yet. I don't have the necessary shapefile or even the legal descriptions of the 1992 boundaries to make a shapefile, and the 1992 map is very different from 1996. Perot won 42 of the 469 or so Election Day Precincts. Perot also won the Question vote in a majority of HDs. Of Perot's 42 precincts, 9 were in Kenai, 7 in Mat-Su and 5 each in Fairbanks, Prince of Wales-Hyder and Yukon-Koyukuk. Perot only won 1 Anchorage precinct and 0 in Juneau.
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« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2018, 11:40:13 PM »

The 1992 presidential election in Alaska was interesting. The winner there (Bush) was held to under 40% because Perot received over 28% of the vote. As the map below shows, Perot even won a county equivalent - Denali Borough:



Perot's statewide weakness was in rural areas off of the road network. He tended to do better in traditionally Republican areas like Mat-Su and Kenai:



Here's a similar map of the Bush and Clinton percentages by Alaska county equivalent:




The 1992-96 all-party county equivalent swing map shows wild swings toward both sides, probably due to Perot:


Unfortunately, I can't make a 1992 precinct map - yet. I don't have the necessary shapefile or even the legal descriptions of the 1992 boundaries to make a shapefile, and the 1992 map is very different from 1996. Perot won 42 of the 469 or so Election Day Precincts. Perot also won the Question vote in a majority of HDs. Of Perot's 42 precincts, 9 were in Kenai, 7 in Mat-Su and 5 each in Fairbanks, Prince of Wales-Hyder and Yukon-Koyukuk. Perot only won 1 Anchorage precinct and 0 in Juneau.
Very cool, I love your work on this.
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weatherboy1102
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« Reply #17 on: January 31, 2018, 03:31:56 PM »

do you have a blank map of the Alaska precincts?
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cinyc
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« Reply #18 on: January 31, 2018, 04:06:02 PM »


For what year? Alaska precincts tend to change every cycle or two.
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cinyc
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« Reply #19 on: February 01, 2018, 08:37:50 PM »

I added the 1960-1998 CE results. So we now have estimates of the total vote by Alaska County Equivalent for all presidential elections since Alaska became a state except for 2004 - which is of ED only for now due to the strange way Absentees were reported. In 1968, some Presidential Only votes weren't broken down by precinct or HD - I did not try to allocate them, either.

Here's the updated 1960-2016 CE gif:
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cinyc
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« Reply #20 on: February 01, 2018, 08:42:44 PM »

Here's the R-D all-party margin by CE for every cycle since 1960:



By my estimates, Both the Ds and Rs have won every Alaska CE at least once since statehood.
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« Reply #21 on: February 01, 2018, 10:21:40 PM »

Threads like this are some of the best on atlas.
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Metalhead123
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« Reply #22 on: February 02, 2018, 08:37:29 AM »

Here's the R-D all-party margin by CE for every cycle since 1960:



By my estimates, Both the Ds and Rs have won every Alaska CE at least once since statehood.
could you possibly also show the percentages of the vote in the county equivalents for each year?
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cinyc
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« Reply #23 on: February 02, 2018, 11:00:54 PM »

could you possibly also show the percentages of the vote in the county equivalents for each year?

I will eventually. I've calculated them, but they're in non-Atlas colors. I'm too lazy to change them over to Atlas colors tonight. If you want a preview, you can look at my RRHElections diary.

Also, I neglected to say here that all my spreadsheets are downloadable from my Google Drive here.
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mianfei
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« Reply #24 on: February 10, 2018, 06:46:49 AM »
« Edited: February 10, 2018, 06:50:26 AM by mianfei »

I might note that the North Slope Borough would have been amongst McGovern’s best county-equivalents – if he got over sixty percent it would be rivalled only by:

County Equivalent
McGovern
%
Nixon
%
Others
%
Margin
%
#1Duval County, Texas3,72985.68%62314.32%00.00%4,35271.37%
#2Shannon County, South Dakota1,24677.34%35622.10%90.56%1,61155.25%
#3Greene County, Alabama3,23568.32%1,40429.65%962.03%4,73538.67%
#4Charles City County, Virginia1,17767.84%53530.84%231.33%1,73537.00%
#5New York (Manhattan) County, New York354,32666.25%178,51533.38%2,0220.38%534,86332.87%
#6Suffolk County, Massachusetts166,25065.76%85,27233.73%1,2990.51%252,82132.03%
#7Elliott County, Kentucky1,49965.26%78234.04%160.70%2,29731.21%
#8Knott County, Kentucky2,77464.71%1,47934.50%340.79%4,28730.21%
#9Macon County, Alabama3,63662.21%1,93133.04%2784.76%5,84529.17%
#10Menominee County, Wisconsin60862.30%35536.37%131.33%97625.92%
#11Saint Louis City, Missouri119,81762.33%72,40237.67%192,21924.67%
#12Deer Lodge County, Montana3,97960.25%2,37335.93%2523.82%6,60424.32%

Checking the figures, North Slope would have been McGovern’s eleventh-strongest county-equivalent by margin – given its majority-minority status, not remarkable of course as six of then ten above it and the District of Columbia are also majority-minority.

Looking at the results table, Wade-Hampton’s shift from McGovern to Ford was replicated in the Lower 48 only by:

  • Pitkin County, Colorado
  • Washtenaw County, Michigan
  • Clay County, South Dakota
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