As promised, I would make maps of primary election results. I started with the three big contests on May 4th – the Democratic Senate contests in North Carolina and Ohio, and the GOP Senate contest in Indiana.
This diary is a bit lengthy with all the images, so most of them will go over the flip!
But a taste first (Green is Marshall, Orange is Cunningham, and Purple is Lewis):
As you can see, Marshall did well in most parts of the state, with the notable exceptions being the Piedmont Triad, which went strongly for Cunningham. Lewis won four counties, Durham and three others located in GK Butterfield’s majority-black district.
More over the flip…
More North Carolina:
Marshall, Cunningham, and Lewis’ performances statewide:
Of course, as we all know, Marshall only got 36%, less than the 40% needed and the race is going to a runoff. Here is Marshall’s performance against the 40% threshold. A red circle indicates a loss of votes against the threshold for Marshall, a green circle indicates a gain. As you can see, those are some mighty big red circles in Forsyth and Guilford Counties of the Triad, accompanied by sizable circles in Durham and Charlotte.
However, I’d still call Marshall the favorite heading into the runoff: Looking at her performance directly against Cunningham, we get the following. Cal ran up the margins in a few counties, but a large part of Marshall falling short of 40% is Lewis’ strong draw on the African American vote.
O-H. I-O..(Hey, I can spell Ohio by myself! No love for the Buckeyes here…)
Ohio is a story of regions: Brunner did exceptionally well in the far Northwest, Metro Cincinnati, and the Ohio River counties. Fisher did admirably almost everywhere else, even taking Brunner’s home county of Franklin. (Brunner in green, Fisher in orange.)
While you might be tempted to think this looks relatively evenly matched, Fisher cleaned up in his base area in the Northeast. There are two ways to visualize this:
Brunner did very well in the counties she won, but the juggernaut of votes that is Cuyahoga County can’t be underestimated in a Democratic contest:
Finally, Ohio’s next door neighbor: Indiana.
Dan Coats hobbled to a 40% victory over two people who split the anti-establishment, and it shows. (Coats in orange, Hostettler in green, Stutzman in purple). IN-03 (Souder’s open district where Stutzman might run) and IN-08 (Hostettler’s former district) are highlighted.
John Hostettler might have been bounced from the Bloody Eighth by a margin of 61-39 in 2006, but GOP primary voters in the district still seem to like him: Hoss’ support is VERY regionalized, doing the best in the southwestern corner and dropping off as you progress northeast. Stutzman seemed to have two stronger areas: a stronghold in the 3rd CD, and a belt across the center of the state including Marion County and Columbus.
Coats, again, I think got the benefit of a divided field, something you can easily tell when you compare Coats v. Hoss+Stutz (Green being Coats, Red being the aggregate of Hostettler and Stutzman), as well as the customary pie chart map:
Next edition of the SSP atlas: May 18th.
Can Ellsworth take advantage of the weak Coats support in his home turf and use that to get him to 50%?
After seeing it, I can’t help but feel that Lee Fisher might be in real trouble if the primary map translates at all to the general election. I don’t feel geography is working to his advantage.
Think about this. Where were the three areas of the state (outside of the democratic stronghold of Cleveland) in which Barack Obama did exceptionally well, helping him to carry the state?
1.Greater Columbus/Franklin County – Obama won by 19%, the biggest margin of victory for a democrat in Ohio history that I’m aware of.
2.Greater Cincinnati/Hamilton County – Obama carried Hamilton by 5%, becoming the first democrat to win there since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
3.Northwestern Ohio – Barack Obama’s biggest improvements over Kerry came in rural Northwestern Ohio, where he jumped upwards of 15% in many counties.
Now, what do you see here? First of all, Lee Fisher get destroyed in Cincinnati. Crushed. Battered. That’s not a good sign because this is an area, at least within Hamilton County, where you have to run close to even if not winning outright if you want to win the state. It looks as though the anti-establishment vote came out pretty heavily here, and I draw that conclusion because Cincinnati-area democrats are usually not as numerous and not as liberal as those from the rest of the state, especially northeast Ohio. From a politics standpoint, you would think they would support the slighly more moderate Fisher over the more unabashed liberal candidate, Brunner, especially since Fisher outspent Brunner 10-1. But clearly, Fisher’s establishment ties didn’t go over well. That concerns me because greater Cincinnati is the tea party’s HQ in Ohio, and if democratic primary voters there are going anti-establishment, that’s NOT good for Fisher in the general as it means many of them may vote against the party in power in November. Plus, Rob Portman is from the Cincinnati area, heightening the possibility of a republican rout there.
Northwestern Ohio is an area without a great deal of population, but as with many states, winning the cities is sometimes not enough, a democrat must also hold down the margins in the rural areas as much as possible. Fisher got dumped in virtually every county here, with the exceptions of Lucas County (Toledo), and Allen County (Lima). Perhaps not coincidentally, those are the two most urban/built up counties in NW Ohio. Everywhere else, Brunner hammered him, including Wood, Sandusky, and Ottawa counties which flipped from Red to Blue in 2008. That’s fairly disturbing, and it makes me think that like in Cincinnati, either a lot of first time Obama voters from 2008 aren’t supporting Fisher, or that conservative and moderate democrats voted anti-establishment and might be willing to do so again in November.
The third area, Columbus, is a bit less clear. This was Brunner’s home region and I expected her to carry Franklin County in the primary. Maybe that was a bit of an unrealistic expectation, but the good news is that Fisher did win there, if only by a few points. Basically, Columbus is an area where the Democrat has to win and win by double digits in order to carry the state, and I have a certain amount of faith that Fisher can do that. Still, I can’t help but wonder if Brunner would’ve done a lot better here.
The fourth area to watch in the state this election cycle is the southeast corridor by the Ohio River. Obama underperformed Kerry here, but the special election last week in PA-12 confirmed that democratic wins are still possible in upper Appalachia. Unfortunately for Fisher, he didn’t perform well here in the primary either, losing every county from Stubenville to Ironton down at the bottom of the state. Brunner’s generally populist (aka: broke) campaign may have resonated with voters here. A victory in Charlie Wilson’s district (OH-6) and a decent showing in Zach Space’s district (OH-18) would certainly help Fisher in the case that he doesn’t do well in Cincinnati or in the rural areas of the west and northwest, but again, based on the primary results, he’s got some serious work to do.
Of course, we all know that Fisher, being from Northeast Ohio, is going to run up the margins big in Cleveland, Akron, and Youngstown, and will probably win most of the counties in between. But let’s face it, any democratic candidate that is worth his campaign manager’s salary will be able to do that. Fisher has some major problems that he needs to sort out downstate, in Cincinnati, in the northwest, in Columbus, and in the industrial working class southeast. He has to perform well in 3 of those four regions to win, and based on the primary map, well, I’m not convinced that he can do it. Us Clevelanders can’t be expected to do ALL the heavy lifting.
Devil’s advocate on my own gloominess – The one county where Fisher did really, really well in the primary outside of the northeast was Montgomery County/Dayton. If Fisher is able to put up a big number in Dayton in November, that will certainly help his cause. This is an area that has been trending away from the democrats at the national level a bit, as Obama only won by 5% in 2008. A 10% or greater win for Fisher would put a decent amount of pressure on Portman to win big in Cincinnati and in rural counties.
The Ohio map is my favorite–I was shocked to see that Brunner, whom most considered the more “progressive” in the primary, cleaned up in some pretty culturally conservative areas in the southeastern part of the state.
She starts with a 9 point edge from the primary and adds an endorsement from Lewis that will deliver tons of votes in Durham and other Eastern / urban counties. By comparison, Cunningham’s campaign appears to be in shambles.
At this point, I would say Marsahll wins 58-42. Now if she can just raise some money, Burr is seriously vulnerable.
I suppose I shouldn’t be THAT surprised – Indianapolis is one of the few places in the state that realizes that Coats is a carpetbagging lobbyist, and nobody knows who Hostettler is, but I’d have thought that Coats would have the Indy moderate vote sewn up a little bit better than that.
I think it’s fair to say this: Ellsworth should focus on the red counties on that turnout map. Those are the Republican voters least receptive to Coats who might support a pro-life, law and order Democrat. It goes without saying that he needs to run the table in IN-08 and in Metro Indy, but I might consider popping up to the NE corner of the state to poach some of those alienated Stutzman fans as well. Coats’ turnout percentages in most of the counties he won are also pretty small, so most of those areas are poachable – except for Ft. Wayne, Porter/LaPorte and Metro Louisville, none of which Ellsworth really needs to win. Lake County I suppose is an afterthought; neither candidate will play well there, so turnout will probably be low.
Now that I’ve seen these pretty graphics, I’m feeling a lot better about Ellsworth’s chances (and I’ve always been betting on him), so long as he gets enough money to close the gap and introduce himself to, well, 2/3s of the state’s voters.
Here is a map of the NC results by precinct I created using Dave’s App.
Blue=Elaine Marshall
Purple=Cal Cunningham
Light Green=Ken Lewis
Dark Green=Marcus Williams
Dark Teal=Ann Worthy
Maroon=Susan Harris
Tan=Tie
I also have maps of the specific regions of the state that I can post as per request. Looking at the map, you can see that Elaine actually ran about even with Ken Lewis in terms of the number of +50% black precincts won and dominated in the 40-49% black precincts, Cal did terrible in both of those groups. Great job though Jeff and thanks for the maps!