OTL Election maps resources thread

[Uhura's Mazda]

Don't the LNP tend to sit with the Nats more, because they were the one state where the Nats were the dominant partner before the merger (same with the Country Liberals)?

No, in the 2013 elections, there were 22 Liberals elected as opposed to six Nationals, although before the merger, the Nats were stronger than they are now. In the 2006 State elections, the Libs were only 3% ahead of the Nats, with the LNP being established in 2008.

 

[Alex Richards]

Very nice work UM. How long has that map been sat on your computer getting updated once a day?

 

[Utgard96]

Some asterisks concerning the National Party: I ummed and ahhed over whether to give them or the Greens the green spectrum on the map, and eventually decided to go with weight of numbers, which I know is the opposite decision to the way Thande did it IN TWENTY THIRTEEN but this is for the simple reason that Nick Xenophon is now using yellow, so you essentially have to use the teal spectrum for somebody. I went with weight of numbers in the end, so the Greens are teal. Of course.

There is a lime shade I usually use for Greens on the Swedish and Finnish maps-

(third from bottom)

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

There is a lime shade I usually use for Greens on the Swedish and Finnish maps-

(third from bottom)

Ooh, thanks. I see you've got a cheeky cyan, too... [STEALS]

 

[Thande]

Ooh, thanks. I see you've got a cheeky cyan, too... [STEALS]

Something about the 10% shade for that one bugs me, I have a feeling that if you saw it on a map it wouldn't be obvious that it belonged to the same party as the other shades on that scale.

 

[Thande]

Still in the vein of U.S. turnout, I decided to try adding 10% of non voters to either side in the 2012 presidential election. For comparison I also tried removing 10% of Obama's OTL votes vs 10% of Romney's.

The result is very interesting. It shows how ingrained the US electoral college setup is with margins shifting considerably across the nation but only impacting the actual result in a handful of states. (I have ignored Nebraska and Maine's split EVs for simplicity). It also shows the effectiveness of Obama's Blue Wall strategy. Obama could lose 10% of his OTL votes (bottom left map), lose Ohio, Florida and Virginia, lose the popular vote across the USA, and yet still narrowly win in the electoral college (now wouldn't that have been fun...)

However this also works the other way - Obama effectively maxed out what he could achieve in OTL and only one state, North Carolina, is actually flipped from Republican to Democratic either by giving 10% of OTL non-voters to Obama (top left map) or taking away 10% of Romney's OTL voters (bottom right map). Having said that, in the first case Georgia and Arizona both come close to flipping, but don't quite make it.

It's worth remembering that when it comes to adding OTL non-voters, 10% represents a lot more people in the states with low turnout than the ones with high turnout - so for example Nevada and the South are more impacted by it than the higher-turnout states of the Upper Midwest. In fact this renders the latter a very resilient part of Obama's Blue Wall and shows that even though they may look close on OTL maps at first glance, it shows how laughable for the foreseeable future the idea is that the Republicans could break into Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan (or even Iowa) is as some have suggested - at least with anything even vaguely resembling the current battlefield and coalitions. The same is true of New Hampshire, Colorado and to a lesser extent New Mexico.

The only way Romney wins here is if he engages 10% of OTL non-voters with his charisma and unique appeal (stop laughing at the back there) as in the top right map, where he flips not only Florida, Ohio and Virginia, but also Pennsylvania and Nevada. Even then it's not what one would call a crushing electoral college victory but it is a victory - and shows how hard a climb any conventional Republican candidate facing any conventional Democratic candidate has at present.

Of course, that's not what's actually happening, is it...

 

[Nanwe]

Nice work, U's M.


I should be clear that this is based on Voting Age Population turnout definition (as this was the only definition with data available for all those elections). In the US turnout is defined by both VAP and Voting Eligible Population (VEP) which is a more sensible method of turnout IMO but the figures aren't as widely available. VAP just compares how many people voted to the total number of people in the state aged 18 or over on election day - which ignores the fact that some of them are ineligible due to not being citizens, being felons (some states ban people from voting for life if they've ever committed a crime), etc.

Not that US turnouts aren't low even bearing this in mind, of course - it is interesting how presidential turnout has noticeably increased starting in 2004 though.

Right. Thanks for the explanation. Although it still sounds complicated. All felons should vote to be honest, but that's a different point.

Do you think it's related to the growing polarisation? I mean, higher turnout is good as long as it doesn't signify an increasing radicalisation and polarisation of society [Nanwe thinks back to Second Republic], but well... Recently I watched this great HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero which depicts the growing radicalisation of the right as rabble-rousers replaced moderate politicians on the right, only to fail at doing the same thing, only to be replaced by even more radical rabble-rousers that still fail. All leading to the development of this stab in the back mentality in the American right.

Of course, I think that the hypothesis of BrainDead is much more interesting, alien ants eating up the minds of politicians to radicalise the country, make it dysfunctional in order to later invade is much more interesting.

 

[Gog (♀)]

A question, if a candidate's only opponent is a write in candidate that gets less than 50 votes compared to the winner that gets tens of thousands, does it count as unopposed?

 

[Thande]

A question, if a candidate's only opponent is a write in candidate that gets less than 50 votes compared to the winner that gets tens of thousands, does it count as unopposed?

That's a difficult question, and generally I've just gone with whatever Wikipedia's decided even though it's obviously arbitrary - often it's clearly just however that state happened to record the result. Probably unopposed.

 

[OwenM]

That's a difficult question, and generally I've just gone with whatever Wikipedia's decided even though it's obviously arbitrary - often it's clearly just however that state happened to record the result. Probably unopposed.

Don't a lot of states only assssign write-ins to candidates if there are more than the winner got votes?

 

[Gog (♀)]

That's a difficult question, and generally I've just gone with whatever Wikipedia's decided even though it's obviously arbitrary - often it's clearly just however that state happened to record the result. Probably unopposed.

I think I'll count it as unopposed.

 

[Indicus]

Still in the vein of U.S. turnout, I decided to try adding 10% of non voters to either side in the 2012 presidential election. For comparison I also tried removing 10% of Obama's OTL votes vs 10% of Romney's.

Aww man. Georgia and Arizona are still red.

 

[Thande]

Aww man. Georgia and Arizona are still red.

Indeed. It's not as easy as it looks to flip those states! (Which is partly my point, same for the Republicans in the Midwest)

 

[Analytical Engine]

Aww man. Georgia and Arizona are still red.

Rednecks.

Rednecks everywhere.

 

[Nanwe]

Rednecks.

Rednecks everywhere.

Yep, pretty much every Briton on holidays in Spain has rednecks

 

[Analytical Engine]

Yep, pretty much every Briton on holidays in Spain has rednecks

Never been on holiday to Spain, and I have a vampiric aversion to bright sunlight. You will not catch me with a red neck.

 

[ajross]

I thought you meant Britain, hence the mention of FPTP.

Yeah, I think so too. But then Austria has high-ish turnout despite permanent (and corrupt!) grand coalitions since 1945. I was wondering if in the Swiss model, like in the US it has do to do, as you say, with the fact that democracy seems more transactional, where party label and ideology matters less than constituents and equilibria and (corrupt) bargains. After all, the US party system is so weak that the Dems and GOP are more of public relations machines than organisations.

It'd be interesting to see if in Switzerland referendums have higher turnouts, if voters perceive them as more transformative than parliamentary elections, they might be more inclined to vote in them.

EDIT: So looking into it, in the 2015 election, turnout was 48.5%, but for the referendums in 2015 and 2016 turnout ranged from 43 to 64%, so it does seem that that may be a reasonable explanation.

But despite permanent (and they really were a lot less permanent than they seem, a matter on which I feel an Inevitably Parochial First TL coming on) grand coalitions, that doesn't mean Austrian elections were hotly contested (if the other lot win the country will fall to godless marxism/dollfuss himself will come back to life and bomb your flat)or the results irrelevant. Indeed high turnout was cause by the clientelist networks the parties operated. Not dissimilar to the spoils system, of course (which I believe led to some of the highest turnouts in US history).

 

[Uhura's Mazda]

DO YOU LAIK AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS

TOO MANY PARTIES 2: SENATE BOOGALOO

 

[Analytical Engine]

Australia intensifies.

 

[Ed Costello]

It's worth remembering that when it comes to adding OTL non-voters, 10% represents a lot more people in the states with low turnout than the ones with high turnout - so for example Nevada and the South are more impacted by it than the higher-turnout states of the Upper Midwest. In fact this renders the latter a very resilient part of Obama's Blue Wall and shows that even though they may look close on OTL maps at first glance, it shows how laughable for the foreseeable future the idea is that the Republicans could break into Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan (or even Iowa) is as some have suggested - at least with anything even vaguely resembling the current battlefield and coalitions. The same is true of New Hampshire, Colorado and to a lesser extent New Mexico.

I've been looking at state voting patterns in previous elections, and Minnesota is the most consistently Democratic state of the past half-century. It's gone Republican once since 1956 - obviously this isn't a rock-solid guarantee it will always be like that (cf. Vermont), but it's the kind of thing that just doesn't seem to be taken into account when discussing this kind of thing.

In fact it strikes me just how much of the 'stereotypical' presidential map ('Jesusland' vs 'United States of Canada') only really emerged around 2000. Before that, you get things like West Virginia being a pretty consistently Democratic state, California being a Republican-leaning swing state and that big tranche of the Deep South that Bill Clinton won both times.