Awesome Interactive Electoral Map (find your county!)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Everyone find your county! (Or the one you grew up in, if that’s more interesting.)

Mine’s Curry County on the Southern Oregon coast.

This year, it went 54.4% McCain, 42.8% Obama (the state as a whole went 57.1% Obama, 40.8% McCain). 12,100 voters.

In 2004, the county was 57.3% Bush and 40.8% Kerry. Around 12,700 voters.

In 2000, it was 56.9% Bush and 35.5% Gore. 11,300 voters.

In 1996, it was 43.7% Dole, 38.3% Clinton, and 18% “Other Candidates.” 10,900 voters.

In 1992, it was – oh thank God – 34.8% Clinton, 34.5% Bush, and 30.8% “Other Candidates.” A difference of 32 votes between Clinton and Bush, out of 11,000 cast.

What’s amazing is the swing between 2004 and 2008 in Jackson County, which is where I graduated college. In 2004, Jackson County voted for Bush over Kerry by an 11.9% margin (102,000 votes cast). In 2008, albeit with only 55% reporting so far, Jackson went for Obama by 6.3% over McCain (65,000 votes cast, which projects to 118,000 total). That’s a big difference.

Fascinating stuff.

2

Maybe I’m really ignorant here, but does Alaska have no counties?

3

They call them boroughs up there, and parishes in Louisiana. It’s the same thing.

4

I like the voting bubbles, L.A County and Cook County will clearly be the victors after crushing all the other little bubbles, and will have a death match for ultimate supremacy.

5

All three counties that I have lived in have always gone blue, even when the state they are in are red:

Broward, Florida
Fulton, Georgia
Sacramento, California

6

Manhattan:

Obama 490,634 (85.1 percent)
McCain 79,448 (13.8 percent)

Obama won Manhattan by a slightly larger margin than Kerry did (71 percent to 65 percent), but turnout was actually down a bit: Democrats were already supercharged, but Republicans knew it was a lost cause - even more than in past years - and they stayed home to a slightly larger degree. Democratic turnout went up by about 40,000, and among Republicans it dropped 420,000. This is what people mean when they talk about turnout and enthusiasm.

Brooklyn, Queens and Westchester went for Obama by bigger margins than they did Kerry. Staten Island, which is basically the last Republican stronghold in New York, preferred Bush to McCain. Nassau and Suffolk both went for Obama and Kerry. Obama only outperformed Kerry by about 1 percent in Nassau, but he made bigger gains in Suffolk - he won by almost 5 pecent to Kerry’s 1 percent, and took most of that from the Republicans but also knocked the third-party vote down.

7

So Sarah has gone back home to her borough?

Kinda has a nice ring to it.

So do we wait for February 2nd before we see here again?

:smiley:

8

The voting shifts are eye-opening. Click on that view and you’ll see that very few places became more “Republican” and the vast majority became more “democratic,” though I assume that was just a reflection of the presidential vote, not other local votes.

9

The “county colors” in Ohio are overwhelmingly red. Crazy red, all over the place.

Problem for the GOP was that all of the blue counties are where all of the people actually live. And those counties voted hard for Obama.

According to the map, Clinton won a lot more counties in 1996 than Obama did in 2008, but the overall state margin of victory for Obama in Ohio was a lot greater.

10

Everywhere I’ve called home is blue, including the counties. The only exception is where I live now, but I don’t consider it home, and don’t plan on staying.

It is interesting how “the country folk” seem to go red, but the big cities go blue, in the same state.

11

Tippecanoe County, Indiana

Barack Obama 55.3% (37,709 votes)
John McCain 43.7% (29,789)
Other candidates* 1.0% (714)

  • Bob Barr (Libertarian) was the only other candidate on the presidential portion of my ballot.

    Similar break to Ohio’s – Obama won only 15 of Indiana’s 92 counties, but took the state by a 49.9% - 49.0% margin, with the also-rans garnering the remaining 1.1%. Among Barack’s strongholds were the counties of Marion (indianapolis), Lake (Gary/Hammond/East Chicago), Monroe (Bloomington), and Vanderburgh (Evansville).

12

I just checked that myself a minute ago. Basically, the entire country supported Obama more strongly than Kerry except for a band that stretched from north Texas/south Oklahoma into Arkansas, Tennessee and Southern Kentucky, with a little bit of south Louisiana, north Alabama and south Florida. (Also a few people in Massachusetts.)

13

Interesting trip down memory lane. I found another county I’ve lived in that was red. Luce county, UP, Michigan. I lived in Newberry when I was young. It was a town then, I’m pretty sure. It’s been downgraded to village! What’s cool though, is the guy who plays John Locke on Lost, is from there, and it’s very possible we lived there at the same time.