Several members of the Atlas community have suggested providing a feature for members to share their endorsements of candidates for the 2006 Senatorial and Gubernatorial contests. This feature has now been added to the Atlas (Links: Gubernatorial Endorsements and Senatorial Endorsements). A compiled map on the endorsements home page shows the aggregate of community endorsements. The new scripts include pages to show state-by-state listing of endorsement totals for each candidate.
2006 Rhode Island Senatorial Republican Primary
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.
2004 Presidential Primary Updates
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.
2006 Connecticut Senatorial Primary
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.
Expanded Presidential Election Content
The site has recently added state-level (and some county-level) data for the Presidential Elections of 1876, 1880, 1884, and 1888 to the database. The total figures for some states have changed slightly from the original html files due to differing figures between the primary sources referenced and the source used to create the original html tables (see What was the Real Popular Vote? entry for some additional information with regard to why popular vote figures for older elections are so variable.). Work continues to add data from older elections (state-level data, county-level data, county-boundary accuracy and image-mapping, etc.).
2006 Election Polls
Two new sections are now available on the Atlas – Gubernatorial Election Polls for 2006 and Senatorial Election Polls for 2006. The new polling sections include the ability to view individual polls in detail as well as summary pages comparing recent polls by state and by polling agency. The main page includes a compilation of the most recent three polls for each state and presents a map of the result showing the current status of who is ahead on a per-state basis as well as a table showing the current view of the pick-ups for each part. Also included is a trend graph illustrating the number of states ahead for each party starting in February of 2006.
2006 Election Predictions
The 2004 Presidential Predictions turned out to be a very popular Atlas site feature – with almost 2,000 unique entries (and over 12,000 total version entries). The compiled map showed the correct winner of every state – with the exception of Ohio – which missed being called by merely two Republican predictions (1,000 Democratic calls vs. 998 Republican).
For 2006, new prediction scripts and databases for the Gubernatorial and United States Senate races have been created. The predictions have been expanded to include independent candidates, show party “pick-ups”, and has more integration with the Atlas Forum.
Participate and Enjoy!
Expanded Content
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.
Total Ballots Cast
Total Ballots Cast are figures published by most election agencies that show the total number of people having cast ballots. Typically, a number of these ballots for any given contest (e.g. President) are invalid – either the voter decided not to choose a candidate for President (called a “blank” or “under-vote”) or the voter selected multiple candidates (called a “void” or “over-vote”).
Figures for Total Ballots Cast in the 2004 and 2000 general elections for President have been added to the database at the state, county, township, and precinct levels for all states in which this data is available. These data may be accessed by using the customize form at the bottom of any detailed data table (Atlas Membership required for county, township, and precinct-level). In addition, there are options to display the total number of invalid ballots and percent invalid for each in the table. For an example, take a look at the 2004 state-level data table with the new data included. Data for previous years are also in process of being added to the database.
The Political Matrix
The Politcal Matrix is a mechanism to map and compare one’s political views in a two-dimensional space. Unlike the simple left/right (liberal/conservative) schema, the Political Matrix uses two axes, the right/left economic axis and the authoritarian/libertarian social axis. 
The two-dimensional map then places your result in one of four quadrants: authoritarian-right, authoritarian-left, libertarian-right, and libertarian-left (moderates would be points that fall close to the origin). Modeled after the Political Compass, and similar to the Libertarian diamond, the Atlas community has created and tested the new matrix to be a more detailed and accurate representation of one’s political philosophy. The Atlas community political matrix chart may be found here. Go ahead and take the test, add the results to your myatlas page and compare your philosophy with the community.