(From the diaries – promoted by DavidNYC)
Update (11/22): Inspired by this post, kite took a look at Senator-Elect Jeanne Shaheen’s numbers in the first district. Turns out Carol Shea-Porter got higher vote totals than Shaheen in 52 out of 79 NH-01 towns. End Update
Carol Shea-Porter delivered a memorable line on election night, directly addressing the “fluke” meme we on Blue Hampshire have been pushing against for two years:
“How did that happen? It must have been a fluke. You didn’t mean to elect me to Congress,” she said to her exuberant supporters. “Well, the voters have spoken, and it turns out you did mean to send me to Congress.”
I’ve been spending the some time looking at two cycles worth of election returns in the Granite State (chiefly from these two sources at the SoS). This is some of what I’ve found, with the reader caveat that I’m not a statistician or political scientist – just curious enough about Carol’s second win to poke my head under the hood to see what I can see about its nature.
My starting point was this: Shea-Porter reached a little over 51% of the vote in 2006, and a little under 52% this year. On the surface, it looked like not much had changed.
(more below the fold…)
But the devil is in the details. This was a general election, not a mid-term. Carol had to earn the support of a whole lot more voters this time around – 176,461 now compared to 100,691 in ’06, to be exact. Moreover, there was a libertarian candidate in the race this cycle who, while not competitive to win, garnered enough of a vote percentage easily to turn this close race into plurality win instead of a majority one if it were truly a toss-up. Yet Congresswoman Shea-Porter actually gained a higher majority this time than the last, albeit narrowly, while Jeb Bradley fell a full three points down from 49% in ’06 to 46% two weeks ago.
So, what changed in two years? First off, let’s have some fun and take a look at the towns and wards that switched winners from ’06 to ’08. The mighty Jeb flipped two whole towns – Hart’s Location (29 votes cast) and Freedom (less than 900 votes cast).
The Congresswoman, on the other hand, flipped the following 2006 Bradley wins to her corner:
Barnstead
Laconia Ward 2
Laconia Ward 3
Laconia Ward 4 (was a tie in 2006)
Manchester Ward 6
Manchester Ward 8
Milton
North Hampton(over 1000 total votes cast for each)
By far the most impressive swings from Jeb to Carol in terms of percentage points were in the voter-rich wards of Laconia and Manchester, as you will see below.
After the flips, I figured the best way to gauge the major shifts in the race would be to calculate all the town and ward percentages for Shea-Porter for both 2006 and 2008, subtract the former from the latter, and then take a look at those areas that were either a three percent or above gain or loss for her. I chose three as the cutoff number, figuring that anything less than that would be harder to argue against statistical noise, even in a well populated town.
First, the towns and wards where Carol Shea-Porter lost 3 or more percentage points from her 2006 totals, plus the added data of the ’08 vote percentage for her, and the sum of the total votes cast in 2008. I included that last figure so the percentages would have more context – big swings either way in sparsely populated rural towns, e.g., are likely to be less meaningful as an indicator of anything than the same swings in the larger city wards. Finally, the color of “’08 CSP %” indicates who won that town or ward (blue for Shea-Porter, red for Bradley):
* Flipped to Bradley in 2008.
Town/Ward ’08 CSP % ’06-’08 +/-% Diff. Total Votes Cast South Hampton 50.00% -12.58% 502 Hart’s Location* 44.83% -9.72% 29 Effingham 50.00% -5.14% 818 Deerfield 44.37% -5.13% 2542 Portsmouth Wd.2 73.19% -4.89% 502 Eaton 61.07% -4.83% 280 Tamworth 55.65% -4.77% 1567 Northwood 49.76% -4.49% 2339 Albany 57.82% -3.63% 422 Ossipee 45.04% -3.41% 2136 Portsmouth Wd.5 69.02% -3.39% 2877 Brentwood 45.71% -3.03% 2179
Next, the towns and wards where Carol Shea-Porter exceeded her 2006 totals by three percent or more:
* Flipped to Shea-Porter in 2008.
Town/Ward ’08 CSP % ’06-’08 +/-% Diff. Total Votes Cast Laconia Wd.2* 56.39% +8.82% 1213 Manchester Wd.11 59.26% +7.27% 2776 Somersworth Wd.1 61.04% +6.61% 1286 Laconia Wd.3* 52.88% +6.33% 1163 Laconia Wd.4* 55.32% +5.32% 1184 Manchester Wd.9 56.51% +4.46% 3911 Manchester Wd.3 62.68% +4.22% 2886 Manchester Wd.8* 50.07% +4.10% 4729 Manchester Wd.7 56.12% +3.96% 3571 Somersworth Wd.5 65.01% +3.85% 761 Manchester Wd.4 57.89% +3.64% 3173 Rochester Wd.6 60.90% +3.64% 1949 Manchester Wd.10 54.90% +3.54% 3905 Center Harbor 46.87% +3.27% 719 Milton* 52.45% +3.13% 2227
So, what broad observations can we come to based on the differences between the 2006 and 2008 Bradley – Shea-Porter races?
* Jeb’s successes were small in number, and unstrategic. Looking at the first chart, you can throw away right off the bat the Portsmouth wards, Eaton, and Albany. They went from big landslides and wins for Carol to slightly less so. Moreover, a fair number of the others are sparsely populated and therefore less critical toward winning elections.
* Bradely, nonetheless, did score some areas that, if I were part of Team CSP, I would want to target for her next race: Effingham, Deerfield, Tamworth, Northwood, Ossipee, and Brentwood.
* The lion’s share of the larger gains made by Carol Shea-Porter from 2006 to 2008, whether resulting by design or not, were exactly where you would most want to have them to build a healthy win margin. A look at voter-dense Manchester says it all. Carol gained in eleven out of twelve of Manchester’s wards, in seven of them significantly so, and even stole two from Jeb’s 2006 totals. Wow!
* I don’t know what’s in Milton’s water but I want some of it.
* The breakout surprise of all this data? Without a doubt – Laconia. Three flipped wards, and major gains made all around. Whoa! Could this have anything to do with Shea-Porter’s campaign manager, Pia Carusone, having once been an area organizer in Laconia for the Dean campaign?
* Look at the total votes cast in the second table. Carol won a greater share of support from more densely populated areas of the state. That is an enviable position to be in for someone who was supposed to be in the fight of her life. In fact, I’ll go one further. These kinds of ward to ward vote gains in voter rich zones, and in the less blue of the two districts, make me wonder whether Carol might be in one of the strongest structural positions of our incredible field of Democrats to run for even higher office.
Adding: please add what you know on the ground in your community that will help flesh out further how these numbers played out town by town. I also plan at a later date to overlay these numbers with Obama’s and Shaheen’s to see what that might tell us too.