I’m going to be doing some slicing-and-dicing of our dataset of 2008 presidential election results by congressional district in the coming weeks. Let’s start out with some of the basics: the most Democratic and Republican-leaning districts, as well as the most narrowly divided districts. (I’m measuring this in terms of the three-way margin, rather than Obama or McCain percentage.)
| State | CD | Member | Party | Obama % | McCain % | 3-way margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NY | 16 | Serrano | (D) | 94.8 | 5.0 | +89.7 |
| NY | 15 | Rangel | (D) | 93.2 | 6.2 | +87.0 |
| NY | 10 | Towns | (D) | 91.0 | 8.7 | +82.3 |
| NY | 11 | Clarke | (D) | 90.5 | 9.1 | +81.4 |
| PA | 02 | Fattah | (D) | 90.1 | 9.5 | +80.5 |
| IL | 02 | Jackson | (D) | 89.7 | 9.9 | +79.8 |
| NY | 06 | Meeks | (D) | 89.0 | 10.7 | +78.4 |
| CA | 09 | Lee | (D) | 88.1 | 9.9 | +78.3 |
| PA | 01 | Brady | (D) | 88.0 | 11.5 | +76.5 |
| IL | 07 | Davis | (D) | 87.8 | 11.6 | +76.5 |
| State | CD | Member | Party | Obama % | McCain % | 3-way margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA | 44 | Calvert | (R) | 49.5 | 48.6 | +0.9 |
| CA | 48 | Campbell | (R) | 49.3 | 48.6 | +0.7 |
| CA | 03 | Lungren | (R) | 49.3 | 48.8 | +0.5 |
| PA | 03 | Dahlkemper | (D) | 49.3 | 49.3 | -0.006 |
| NV | 02 | Heller | (R) | 48.8 | 48.8 | -0.03 |
| OH | 14 | LaTourette | (R) | 49.1 | 49.4 | -0.2 |
| PA | 12 | Murtha | (D) | 49.1 | 49.5 | -0.3 |
| MI | 03 | Ehlers | (R) | 48.7 | 49.2 | -0.5 |
| CO | 04 | Markey | (D) | 48.7 | 49.5 | -0.9 |
| FL | 25 | Diaz-Balart | (R) | 49.2 | 50.2 | -1.0 |
| State | CD | Member | Party | Obama % | McCain % | 3-way margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TN | 01 | Roe | (R) | 28.8 | 69.8 | -41.0 |
| TX | 19 | Neugebauer | (R) | 27.4 | 71.9 | -44.6 |
| OK | 03 | Lucas | (R) | 27.2 | 72.8 | -45.6 |
| LA | 01 | Scalise | (R) | 25.7 | 72.7 | -47.0 |
| TX | 08 | Brady | (R) | 25.5 | 73.8 | -48.2 |
| TX | 11 | Conaway | (R) | 23.7 | 75.5 | -51.7 |
| GA | 09 | Deal | (R) | 23.5 | 75.3 | -51.9 |
| AL | 06 | Bachus | (R) | 23.3 | 75.9 | -52.6 |
| TX | 13 | Thornberry | (R) | 22.7 | 76.5 | -53.83 |
| AL | 04 | Aderholt | (R) | 22.5 | 76.3 | -53.84 |
Were there any changes in these lists from 2004? Not much change in the most Democratic 10: the only one falling off the list is CA-08 (which was the only white plurality district in the top 10), replaced by IL-07. Four districts get swapped into/out of the most Republican 10: KS-01, UT-01, NE-03, and UT-03 (the second reddest district in 2004) fall off the list, while OK-03, TN-01, LA-01, and AL-04 move on. In fact, AL-04, a toxic mix of Birmingham exurbs and the southernmost tip of Appalachia, moves up from only the 14th most Republican district in 2004 to the single reddest district in 2008.
There’s no overlap between the 2008 and 2004 closest districts; the closest district in 2004 was IA-03. Here’s one more figure that tells the story of the two elections, though: IA-03 in 2004 was the 180th most Democratic district in the country. PA-03 in 2008, on the other hand, was the 243rd. (In other words… Kerry won 179 districts. Obama won 242 of them.)
The incumbent was actually defeated by a somewhat more moderate challenger in Roe last year.
That’s the one southern seat that’s been strongly republican since before the Civil War.
From CO-04
that in New York, Obama’s best district was the heavily Hispanic NY-16 in the Bronx and not the black-majority districts in Brooklyn? Well, okay, those are not far behind, but considering he won 96% of the black vote and 67% of the Hispanic vote it’s intriguing.
With the exception of LA-1 (Scalise) and maybe Brady (TX-8), each set of the top 10 districts of McCain & Obama are lower income and less educated. Yet, these districts are racially worlds apart from one another.
Neverthless, Obama never went below 22% in any of the top McCain districts while McCain barely broke double digits in Obama’s top 10 districts.
were in Western PA. Interesting.
GW Bush won in 2004 by 50.7-48.3 and won 256 Congressional districts. Obama won in 2008 by 52.9-45.6 and won 242 Congressional districts.
Interesting how Obama can outpace Bush by so much in the Electoral College and in the popular vote but can’t exceed Bush’s number of House districts. I bet it’s because so much of the Democrat vote is concentrated in massively Democrat-leaning areas and the GOP’s support is scattered more broadly across the country. VRA and such
slicing and dicing, myself, and cross posted it over at Big Orange.
AFAIK, NYC is unique in that so many of its CDs are entirely pure urban. Many of Chicago’s districts include suburbs, or semi-suburbs. Los Angeles doesn’t even seem to have a city (hehehe, I’m an East Coast snob, sorry).