(MAP) 2018 Primary Electorate by County (COMPLETE*)

[Adam Griffin]

DE added; Democrats managed to win all 3 counties:

2018 Primary:
(2016 Presidential)

Statewide: 68.7-31.3
(56.0-44.0)

New Castle: 78.4-21.6
(65.6-34.4)
Kent: 60.3-39.7
(52.6-47.4)
Sussex: 51.2-48.8
(61.4-38.6)

[Adam Griffin]

NH & RI added.

And here is a township map of NH's primary ballots:

[Adam Griffin]

Because it's highly unlikely I'll ever be able to get turnout figures by party and county for NY (and because the State Board of Elections either omits from the ballot entirely or just doesn't report online results for uncontested contests - which every statewide GOP contest was), I'm going to go ahead and fill in NY using the same method I did for UT: active registered voters by county. It's not ideal, but I really don't want to leave the project blank (and the figures probably get us close to what an actual primary electorate would resemble, at least in terms of registration).

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fantastic map Griff! Great work.

Does anyone have a convenient map showing which states have open, closed and semi-closed primaries? It'd help a lot in interpreting these patterns (like, it's pretty obvious given the results that WV and OK are closed, for example).

[Adam Griffin]

Fantastic map Griff! Great work.

Does anyone have a convenient map showing which states have open, closed and semi-closed primaries? It'd help a lot in interpreting these patterns (like, it's pretty obvious given the results that WV and OK are closed, for example).

More or less:

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fantastic map Griff! Great work.

Does anyone have a convenient map showing which states have open, closed and semi-closed primaries? It'd help a lot in interpreting these patterns (like, it's pretty obvious given the results that WV and OK are closed, for example).

More or less:

What's the difference between "partially open", "open to unaffiliated" and "partially closed"?

Also wait, since when does Nebraska have top-two?

[smoltchanov]

Thanks a lot! Extremely useful.

[Adam Griffin]

Fantastic map Griff! Great work.

Does anyone have a convenient map showing which states have open, closed and semi-closed primaries? It'd help a lot in interpreting these patterns (like, it's pretty obvious given the results that WV and OK are closed, for example).

More or less:

What's the difference between "partially open", "open to unaffiliated" and "partially closed"?

Also wait, since when does Nebraska have top-two?

NE technically doesn't fall into any of these categories because there is no specific primary restrictions codified into state law in NE to my knowledge, except...jungle primaries are used/mandated for state legislative races (because the unicameral chamber is nonpartisan).

However, there are four different primary situations in Nebraska.

• In state & local primaries, both D & R primaries are closed.
• In congressional primaries, both are open.
• In presidential primaries (in 2016), the Democrats had a closed caucus (only party members) and the Republicans had a closed primary (only party members).
• In state legislative primaries, the process is effective closed (see state/local primaries), but all of the candidates appear on both parties' primary ballots, and the 2 (nonpartisan) candidates to receive the most votes advance to the general election.

Here's what the NCSL says about those three categories:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So basically, partially open primaries may require you to change your partisan affiliation on the spot to vote in a primary for a party of which you're not currently a member, open to unaffiliated voters means anybody not registered with a party can participate in a primary (and such is codified into state law; it's static), and partially closed is similar to open to unaffiliated voters system (but the system can - and often does - change from year to year; it's dynamic)...I think.

[Adam Griffin]

Another way of looking at it is to assume that primaries are effectively "open" if the only restriction is that members of a party must pull their primary's ballot, and then compare those to states where unaffiliated voters are restricted in some way (or not permitted to vote at all). Obviously a few notable states (like NC) stick out in this comparison, but it does simplify the analysis.

Red states are where you absolutely have to be registered with that party in order to vote in its primary; yellow states have exceptions (listed below) and green states are either entirely open or only restrict party members from voting in other parties' primaries (AK is a unique partial exception):

[Senator Incitatus]

In NJ, Unaffiliated voters can register with a party at the primary polling place.

[Adam Griffin]

In NJ, Unaffiliated voters can register with a party at the primary polling place.

I somehow missed that. Thanks!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Another way of looking at it is to assume that primaries are effectively "open" if the only restriction is that members of a party must pull their primary's ballot, and then compare those to states where unaffiliated voters are restricted in some way (or not permitted to vote at all). Obviously a few notable states (like NC) stick out in this comparison, but it does simplify the analysis.

Red states are where you absolutely have to be registered with that party in order to vote in its primary; yellow states have exceptions (listed below) and green states are either entirely open or only restrict party members from voting in other parties' primaries (AK is a unique partial exception):

That's really helpful, yeah! Thanks.

So, basically, the results in green states, as well as Alaska, can be taken as some indication for voting patterns going forward (although obviously some are still skewed by the lack of competitive primaries). The ones with "+" (including, apparently, NJ) can be taken as a very rough indication, and the other yellow ones and the red ones can be disregarded entirely.

I'm shocked about WV, given that the primary map still looks like something out of the 1960s.

[Adam Griffin]

I'm shocked about WV, given that the primary map still looks like something out of the 1960s.

With WV specifically, it's mostly because Democrats are still the dominant faction at the local level virtually everywhere. People who would otherwise re-register as Republicans opt not to in order to have say in the de-facto general elections in their cities and counties. However, there is of course the option for people to re-register as unaffiliated/independent (as both parties allow them to vote in their primaries), so it's also probably a case of laziness on the part of voters as well.

That is happening at a pretty astounding rate, for what it's worth. WV's raw Democratic advantage has declined from 57% in 2014 (613k) to 43% in 2018 (525k). The GOP is at 32% and unaffiliateds are at 25%. Of course, my comparison neutralizes any unaffiliated/third-party registrations, so based on this measurement, Dems there are still 57% of the two-party electorate. Essentially, Dems have lost 88k net voters over the past 4 years, the GOP has picked up 40k and unaffiliateds have picked up 48k.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Right, that makes sense.

So since that might be happening in other states like this, I guess only States in the two darkest shades of green on your map should be taken with any degree of seriousness.

[Adam Griffin]

Right, that makes sense.

So since that might be happening in other states like this, I guess only States in the two darkest shades of green on your map should be taken with any degree of seriousness.

For the most part, I'd say the results by county are at minimum fairly reflective in all but 7 states: OK, WV, KY & LA (which doesn't have its "primary" until November 6) are the most obvious examples. NC is the fifth and would be obvious at the county level if I could actually get the county-level data - and it's not so much because Democrats were 56% of the electorate there, but rather where Democrats manage to pull primary voters from in order to achieve that result. UT & NY are both based on registration stats, which call into question what's shown there as well.

There is of course skewing in various states that occur because of sheer dominance by one party throughout: much of the NE (RI being perhaps the best example) is victim to this, as is the Great Plains in favor of the GOP.

The last type of skewing tends to be (I forget the exact term for this) symmetrical skewing, where dominance of one party or another in most areas of a state produce substantially stronger performances for the ruling party just about everywhere, but the statewide figures end up cancelling each party's overperformance out. My home state is a good example (both GOP and/or DEMs doing 10-20 points better in terms of primary electorate in practically every county, but the state primary electorate being GOP +4 compared to Trump +5).

In most states, however, the overall/statewide figures are relatively on-point (in particular, when comparing them to past primary cycles in search of broader trends compared to 4 years ago).

[Adam Griffin]

NC has (finally) been added.

[DINGO Joe]

NC has (finally) been added.

Kind of interesting that Wautauga and New Hanover actually had more R primary voters.

[Adam Griffin]

NC has (finally) been added.

Kind of interesting that Wautauga and New Hanover actually had more R primary voters.

Watauga's not too surprising to me given that it's a college swing county; iirc the composition was 53-47.

New Hanover was barely R (literally something like 50.1-49.9).

[DINGO Joe]

NC has (finally) been added.

Kind of interesting that Wautauga and New Hanover actually had more R primary voters.

Watauga's not too surprising to me given that it's a college swing county; iirc the composition was 53-47.

New Hanover was barely R (literally something like 50.1-49.9).

Still, they voted 56 and 52 D in the fall.

[Adam Griffin]

NC has (finally) been added.

Kind of interesting that Wautauga and New Hanover actually had more R primary voters.

Watauga's not too surprising to me given that it's a college swing county; iirc the composition was 53-47.

New Hanover was barely R (literally something like 50.1-49.9).

Still, they voted 56 and 52 D in the fall.

It's not uncommon for younger people to not be fans of voting in primaries; in the case of New Hanover, there may be some ancestral/local GOP registration effects at work there. I just checked and was actually surprised to see that both counties have net R registration advantages, and are pretty close to the overall primary breakdowns (54-46 and 51-49, respectively).

[TJ in Oregon]

Interesting how well this lines up with the county map of the OH 2018 governor's general election. The only two counties different were Belmont and Monroe, the two demosaur counties in the SE.

[Badger]

The national map that shows of Kansas is indeed still with the last bastions of moderate Republican voters

[Adam Griffin]

Inspired by above and with the GE behind us, here's a map showing which party/parties won each county in the primary and general for 2018:

[Adam Griffin]

On the above map...

Counties & Equivalents (Primary -> General)

Code:

1884 GOP->GOP
503 DEM->DEM
239 DEM->GOP
103 GOP->DEM
413 N/A

GE County Wins:

Code:

2123 GOP
606 DEM
413 N/A

Under conditions where every county or equivalent could be compared in the same way (GE wins), I'd expect the totals to be something like 2431-711 (slightly better than Obama's 2012 performance in terms of counties won; he won 689).

[Gass3268]

Inspired by above and with the GE behind us, here's a map showing which party/parties won each county in the primary and general for 2018:

Which races did you use for this map? It appears to use a mix of both Senate and Governor races? Like Wisconsin and Ohio are for the Senate.