Just thought I would share my current undertaking with regard to the site (in addition to adding the primary results listed below). I am in the process of compiling, from official county canvasses, the complete precinct-level Presidential Election results for New York for the last three general elections (1992, 1996, and 2000). I would like to have the most comprehensive and accurate county, city/town, and precinct-level results for the state of New York on the web (BTW, New York is my original home state, having grown up in Onondaga County). I have a stack of paper here a foot tall and have completed 45 counties, adding 1992 city/town maps today for Saratoga, Alabany, Chautauqua, Columbia, Oneida, Orange, Rensselaer, Schoharie, Schuyler, and Tioga. I’ll add the city/town and precinct data for these counties in a few days (I’ll add a few more counties before performing the data upload). There are still several large urban counties to go (including Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Rockland, Monroe, Erie, and the five boroughs of New York City).
In particular, the 1992 township map is very interesting… a partial map is available to members by clicking on the “Town” button on the 1992 New York page. The 1996 and 2000 city/town maps are already complete. I have also discovered several mistakes in the statewide Canvasses published by the New York State Board of Elections. I will be making corrections to the data and adding notes to signify the changes.
I have received many questions with regard to my updating the Democratic primary results. The plan is to add these results to the site (county, congressional district maps and data) as they are officially canvassed by the official state agencies responsible for tabulating election data (my schedule permitting, of course). The canvassing process typically takes several weeks. This methodology provides for accurate results and requires only a single update per state. I plan to add results for all primaries prior to and including Super Tuesday this weekend.
Today is Super Tuesday – states that collectively account for about 33% of the US population vote today in primaries (and one caucus), including the large states of New York, Ohio, and California. Massachusetts also votes today. The election here is a modified open primary (meaning that “Unenrolled” voters, i.e. Independents, can vote in either party’s primary), I headed off to the polls to cast my ballot – this time in the democratic presidential primary (I will resubmit my voter registration card to change my registration back to unenrolled shortly). Not many people at the polls when I voted – and it was a spectacular day, weatherwise, here in eastern Massachusetts (in the 60s Farenheit! whoa!). I cast my ballot uneventfully into the optical scanning machine and headed out. Most the major Democratic candidates were still on the ballot, including those that dropped out early, such as Gephardt. Waiting now to see how the results turn out.
There is an article at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today titled Racine County voters seem to know how to pick ’em. The author, Tom Kertscher, contacted me and used the Atlas for his research. While Racine County is not a 100% bellwether like those covered on the bellwether page (Racine incorrectly voted for Gerald Ford in 1976), it did vote for the winning national candidate in every other election between 1960 and 2000.
The Wisconsin Primary turned out to be more competitive than expected. In my opinion, a real problem with the 2004 Democratic Primary schedule has been the crowded nature of the contests. The schedule gives little time for the candidates to campaign in each state and little time for the voters to size-up those seeking the Democratic nomination. In Wisconsin, a single primary contested by multiple candidates resulted in a much closer result. Kerry “wins” the contest with 39.7% of the vote, followed by Edwards at 34.3% and Dean at 18.3%. The county map shown here is color-coded with red for Kerry and green for Edwards – with the various shades showing percenage of the vote in decades (>30%, >40%, etc.) Note that even though Kerry “wins”, he shares the delegates with the top three candidates (those that receive more than 15% in any of the congressional districts and state-wide at large). The current result predicts 30 delegates for Kerry to 24 for Edwards and 13 for Dean. Edwards won in two of the eight congressional districts (the first and fifth) and Kerry wins the remainder.
From a regional point-of-view, Kerry was the strongest in the north-west of the state and his best county was Menominee (62.7% – it is also the home of the Menominee Native American Tribe). Edwards had a better showing in the counties to the north and west of Milwaukee. His best county was Waukesha with 42% of the vote. Dean did not win a single county – likely a decidely disappointing result – and received the greatest percentage of votes in Douglas and Portage Counties (about 25%).
The New York Times has published an article titled One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State. It is an interesting read with regard to the recent adoption of the terminology of “Red States” and “Blue States” to refer to whether the states were won by the Republicans or Democrats in the 2000 election respectively. I was actually contacted by the author of this article last week with the question of how I chose my color representation for the Republicans and Democrats (However, I wasn’t actually quoted in the article). For readers of the forum or FAQ, the reasons are well known. From my point of view, the colors do not represent candidates or parties, but rather data (in this case, votes for a particular candidate). Looking at the maps from an analytical perspective, the meaning is discerned from the key and one should not get hung up on the selection of colors, for they are only a representation of the data and no other symbolism should be read into the presentation. I’m sure, however, that I will continue to receive copious quantities of email with regard to color selection.
I was contacted by Dick Stoken last summer with a request for permission to use some of the data presented on uselectionatlas.org in his new book, The Great Game of Politics – Why We Elect Whom We Elect. I gladly granted and received my copy of the book this week. I’ll comment after I finish reading it. If you like, you can get a copy from Barnes & Noble
I’ve had the suggestion of a CD (compact disk) version of the Atlas on the store page for some time. Today, it is finally available! The Atlas CD version is the html version of the site with all the national maps from 1789 through 2000, the state county maps from 1960 through 2000, county-level data table from 1960-2000, CD maps for 2000, etc. The CD also includes the Certificate of Ascertainment and Certificate of Vote for each state in 2000 (from the National Archives and Records Administration). Bonus features on the disk include super larger versions of the national county maps (1960 through 2000) in Mercator Projection (2511 x 1350 pixels) and also national county maps in Lambert Conical Projection (1440 x 890 pixels). The CD may be purchased through the Cafe Press store. The cover artwork is courtesy of my good friend, Sean Moyer, over at The Chrome Cow. He is quite an accomplished computer artist.
