OTL Election maps resources thread
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
I've already posted these over on SLP, but thought I'd put them over here too as they're probably of interest - I've been mapping this year's state legislative elections in the Deep South, beginning with Alabama:
Alabama was compelled to redraw its districts in 2017 because the old districts were found to be inappropriately racially gerrymandered - which makes a nice change from Deep South states redrawing their districts mid-decade in order to inappropriately racially gerrymander. There was no overall change in seat numbers in the Senate, but the Democrats lost five seats in the House, leaving them effectively reduced in both the Senate and the House to effectively the Black Belt, Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville. There are a couple of exceptions in the House, with Dexter Grimsley holding the 85th district in Wiregrass Country and 24-year incumbent Barbara Boyd being re-elected in the Talladega-to-Anniston 32nd district, but other long-term Democratic seats were lost, like the Tuscumbia-based 3rd district where long-term incumbent Marcel Black retired and the peripheral Black Belt seat of the 65th district, where incumbent Elaine Beech has been unseated. These losses are really the tailend of the re-alignment of white Southerners to the Republican Party, and it's hard to see the Democrats falling much further as the vast majority of their remaining seats are unopposed African-American majority districts - although as can be seen from the map there are also a horrific number of unopposed elections in Republican seats. Despite their spectacular Senate win in 2017, there doesn't seem to be a corresponding resurgence on a state level.
Alabama was compelled to redraw its districts in 2017 because the old districts were found to be inappropriately racially gerrymandered - which makes a nice change from Deep South states redrawing their districts mid-decade in order to inappropriately racially gerrymander. There was no overall change in seat numbers in the Senate, but the Democrats lost five seats in the House, leaving them effectively reduced in both the Senate and the House to effectively the Black Belt, Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville. There are a couple of exceptions in the House, with Dexter Grimsley holding the 85th district in Wiregrass Country and 24-year incumbent Barbara Boyd being re-elected in the Talladega-to-Anniston 32nd district, but other long-term Democratic seats were lost, like the Tuscumbia-based 3rd district where long-term incumbent Marcel Black retired and the peripheral Black Belt seat of the 65th district, where incumbent Elaine Beech has been unseated. These losses are really the tailend of the re-alignment of white Southerners to the Republican Party, and it's hard to see the Democrats falling much further as the vast majority of their remaining seats are unopposed African-American majority districts - although as can be seen from the map there are also a horrific number of unopposed elections in Republican seats. Despite their spectacular Senate win in 2017, there doesn't seem to be a corresponding resurgence on a state level.
Which would seem to prove that that was contingent on the GOP nominating an actual pedophile rather than a sign of realignment.
I mean, there was some trend towards the Democrats in the places Moore performed worse than expected (Huntsville, Shelby County), but at most that means the 25-point and 50-point majority colours swap places on the map.
Next up, the Palmetto State. I'm not sure it's really fair to call what happened in South Carolina this year an election, but it can nonetheless be mapped. A whopping 68 of South Carolina's 124 State House seats were uncontested, and a further 11 were only contested by minor parties, including two from the surprisingly resilient United Citizens Party, who date back to the end of Jim Crow as a vehicle to try and elect black people in response the Democrats refusal to nominate them. The result of this was that only just over a third of voters had a Democrat-Republican contest on the state legislative ballot. Very noticeable on the map is the Charleston area, home of the 1st Congressional District which the Democrats unexpectedly managed to gain after former South Carolina Governor and centre of one of the strangest political disappearances since John Stonehouse, Marshall "Mark" Sanford Jr., was primaried by Trump-backed Katie Arrington, which has a lot of very pale majorities on both sides and saw two seats change hands - which cancelled each other out. In fact, all changes cancelled themselves out at this election and the balance remains 80 Republicans to 44 Democrats. The Democrats are contained to the Black Belt, Charleston and city centre districts in places like Greenville and Spartanburg. Unlike in Alabama, there is a clear path for Democratic gains here in Charleston and its environs in the future, but this is another state where politics have largely ossified, with even contested races returning huge majorities. With neither party seemingly bothered about fighting elections - and frankly, this is a state where I kind of understand why given the results when they do try - there doesn't even seem to be a possibility of things changing substantially.
I moved away from South Carolina to Georgia thinking it couldn't possibly be worse. After all, Georgia is a competitive state, with high-profile races for governor and the US House. Surely, surely, there would be fewer unopposed elections here, of all Deep South states.
Oh how wrong I was.
70 of the 180 seats in the Georgia State House of Representatives saw contests of any sort - just over a third. Similarly, 22 of the 56 State Senate districts saw challengers. Astonishingly, this is an improvement on 2016, when only 13 Senate and 32 House districts had more than one candidate. Those seats that actually saw elections tended to be very competitive, with 17 seats in the house probably changing hands - 11 from the Republicans to the Democrats, plus four more where the Democrats lead in but are yet to be called, all in the Atlanta metro, but two seats in Athens (the 117th and 119th districts) won by the Democrats in special elections narrowly returning to Republican hands. 2 northern Atlanta Senate seats also flipped to the Democrats. Some of these swings were huge - some necessarily, because one of the state senate seats and five of the state house seats returned Republicans unopposed in 2016, others as a consequence of good campaigning. Of note were the eleven point swing in the 40th Senate district and the twelve-point swing in the 54th House district.
These pickups were concentrated overwhelmingly in the 6th and 7th House districts. The white-majority 6th was the home of the most-expensive ever special election last year, when Jon Ossoff, probably grown in a lab somewhere to be the DNC's ideal White Moderate Suburban Candidate, failed to gain the seat by a few percentage points, but has now been gained by Lucy McBath, an African-American gun control activist. Create your own arbitrary narrative about what this means for Democratic presidential candidates in 2020. In next-door's 7th, now only a white plurality seat, Republican incumbent Rob Woodall leads Professor Carolyn Bourdeaux by only 900 votes and the race is still yet to be called. All in all, these results are a real sign of the meteoric shift in the Atlanta Metro - the aforementioned 6th and 7th districts voted for Romney by over 20 points and for Trump by two and seven points respectively. The good news for the Democrats wasn't limited entirely to Atlanta, however, seeing big swings towards them in the suburban Savannah 164th district, the rural south-western 151st and 154th districts, located within Sanford Bishop's congressional district, and the 147th district in Warner Robins, as well as the two aforementioned Athens districts which returned to the Republicans. All this on a house map that was partially redrawn in 2015 and a senate map in 2014 to try and shore up potentially vulnerable Republican incumbents in the Atlanta metro - and with yet another House redistricting plan currently proposed.
With the breaking of the Senate supermajority, substantial gains in the House and a potential pickup in the Secretary of State race, which would neutralize the frankly banana-republic levels of shenanigans committed by until-very-recently incumbent Brian Kemp, who is also the probably-successful Republican candidate for governor, the Democrats have reason to feel good about the future in Georgia, but the map looks very, very different to when Clinton narrowly carried the state in 1992. Whether the Democrats can consolidate their Atlanta gains in 2020 is going to be one of the many, many interesting questions of that election cycle.
Oh how wrong I was.
70 of the 180 seats in the Georgia State House of Representatives saw contests of any sort - just over a third. Similarly, 22 of the 56 State Senate districts saw challengers. Astonishingly, this is an improvement on 2016, when only 13 Senate and 32 House districts had more than one candidate. Those seats that actually saw elections tended to be very competitive, with 17 seats in the house probably changing hands - 11 from the Republicans to the Democrats, plus four more where the Democrats lead in but are yet to be called, all in the Atlanta metro, but two seats in Athens (the 117th and 119th districts) won by the Democrats in special elections narrowly returning to Republican hands. 2 northern Atlanta Senate seats also flipped to the Democrats. Some of these swings were huge - some necessarily, because one of the state senate seats and five of the state house seats returned Republicans unopposed in 2016, others as a consequence of good campaigning. Of note were the eleven point swing in the 40th Senate district and the twelve-point swing in the 54th House district.
These pickups were concentrated overwhelmingly in the 6th and 7th House districts. The white-majority 6th was the home of the most-expensive ever special election last year, when Jon Ossoff, probably grown in a lab somewhere to be the DNC's ideal White Moderate Suburban Candidate, failed to gain the seat by a few percentage points, but has now been gained by Lucy McBath, an African-American gun control activist. Create your own arbitrary narrative about what this means for Democratic presidential candidates in 2020. In next-door's 7th, now only a white plurality seat, Republican incumbent Rob Woodall leads Professor Carolyn Bourdeaux by only 900 votes and the race is still yet to be called. All in all, these results are a real sign of the meteoric shift in the Atlanta Metro - the aforementioned 6th and 7th districts voted for Romney by over 20 points and for Trump by two and seven points respectively. The good news for the Democrats wasn't limited entirely to Atlanta, however, seeing big swings towards them in the suburban Savannah 164th district, the rural south-western 151st and 154th districts, located within Sanford Bishop's congressional district, and the 147th district in Warner Robins, as well as the two aforementioned Athens districts which returned to the Republicans. All this on a house map that was partially redrawn in 2015 and a senate map in 2014 to try and shore up potentially vulnerable Republican incumbents in the Atlanta metro - and with yet another House redistricting plan currently proposed.
With the breaking of the Senate supermajority, substantial gains in the House and a potential pickup in the Secretary of State race, which would neutralize the frankly banana-republic levels of shenanigans committed by until-very-recently incumbent Brian Kemp, who is also the probably-successful Republican candidate for governor, the Democrats have reason to feel good about the future in Georgia, but the map looks very, very different to when Clinton narrowly carried the state in 1992. Whether the Democrats can consolidate their Atlanta gains in 2020 is going to be one of the many, many interesting questions of that election cycle.
Witch0Winter
Banned
I know the feeling. My State House, State Senate, and Congressional District races were all uncontested so my voting went extra fast because I only had one option to select. Yay democracy?
Tennessee, home of the nation's most disappointing Blue Dog senatorial candidate, former governor whose surname I recently discovered is not Bredesden, Phil Bredesen (remember when people said he'd do better than O'Rourke?), is surprisingly good for contested elections, so long as you don't look at Memphis too closely. It's also home to whatever the American equivalent of an UPLB is in attorney John Windle, a Democrat who has represented a huge swathe of central Tennessee in the 41st House district, that voted for Trump by well over forty points, for the past 27 years and was re-elected reasonably comfortably even this year. But, like so much of the South, the map is far removed from how it looked even a decade ago, by which I mean it's red. Oh so red.
The lesson from Tennessee is that contested does not mean competitive. Huge majorities is the name of the game in both the House and the Senate. There are exceptions to this rule, however: the Democrats came within a few thousand votes of picking up a Senate seat in the 31st Senate District in the Memphis suburbs, an area which also saw close races for two House seats; made significant progress in Knoxville, a city formerly not especially receptive to Democrats and dominant in a county Trump won by almost twenty-five points, winning a second seat on a big swing and narrowly missing out on a third; and made strides in both the House and Senate in the formerly heavily-Republican Rutherford county, home of Murfreesboro and a large chunk of Nashville suburbia. On a big picture level, though, almost nothing changed, with no seats switching in the Senate and only the aforementioned 13th district in Knoxville flipping in the House. This does at least mean the Democrats performed better than in Alabama and South Carolina, and have definite targets for the future, which I'm sure is very comforting for them even as the man widely thought to be their best chance at statewide office for the foreseeable future went down in flames to young earth creationist Marsha Blackburn. Hard to believe this is the same state that Al Gore, the eternal never-happening presidential candidate, represented in the senate until 1993.
The lesson from Tennessee is that contested does not mean competitive. Huge majorities is the name of the game in both the House and the Senate. There are exceptions to this rule, however: the Democrats came within a few thousand votes of picking up a Senate seat in the 31st Senate District in the Memphis suburbs, an area which also saw close races for two House seats; made significant progress in Knoxville, a city formerly not especially receptive to Democrats and dominant in a county Trump won by almost twenty-five points, winning a second seat on a big swing and narrowly missing out on a third; and made strides in both the House and Senate in the formerly heavily-Republican Rutherford county, home of Murfreesboro and a large chunk of Nashville suburbia. On a big picture level, though, almost nothing changed, with no seats switching in the Senate and only the aforementioned 13th district in Knoxville flipping in the House. This does at least mean the Democrats performed better than in Alabama and South Carolina, and have definite targets for the future, which I'm sure is very comforting for them even as the man widely thought to be their best chance at statewide office for the foreseeable future went down in flames to young earth creationist Marsha Blackburn. Hard to believe this is the same state that Al Gore, the eternal never-happening presidential candidate, represented in the senate until 1993.
Thande
Donor
Massachusetts State House and Senate elections.
The real reason for America's strong economy is the Unopposed Colour Shade Paint Factory hiring so many more workers to keep up with demand. Also, those district names with all the far-separated English county names are so incongruous for a British psephologist.
The real reason for America's strong economy is the Unopposed Colour Shade Paint Factory hiring so many more workers to keep up with demand. Also, those district names with all the far-separated English county names are so incongruous for a British psephologist.
Obviously there's still a few results to come in but here's the (current) majority map of the 2018 House.
After a seemingly endless stream of uncontested elections, North Carolina appears to make me feel a lot better. Out of 170 state legislative districts over both houses, only a single district - House 107, in the depths of Charlotte - had only one candidate, and only two - House 24 and 13 - had only minor party or unaffiliated candidates as opponents, and one of them actually nearly won. Why North Carolina had fewer uncontested races than even Minnesota is unclear, but I would hazard a guess at the court-mandated redistricting in 2017, which saw one of the most aggressive Republican gerrymanders at both a congressional and state level undone. Whilst the Democrats have narrowly failed to make any gains in Congress, although coming very close in three districts, it's a different story in the legislature, having picked up somewhere between three and six (probably six) seats in the Senate and between eight and eleven (probably nine) in the House and easily breaking Republican super-majorities. This includes every house district in Wake County, home of Raleigh, and all but one in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), but also encompasses seats in the rural African-American majority areas, the transplant-filled areas of the Research Triangle, and smaller cities like Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Wilmington and Asheville. There were even two of the rarest kinds of Democratic pickups - white rural districts in the south. Both the 93rd and 119th districts in the Appalachians were picked up from incumbent Republicans, and not even especially narrowly. Whilst the 93rd contains Appalachian State University, which is probably what carried Ray Russell to victory, the 119th consists of traditional swing areas which have been trending increasingly Republican so this might be a good sign for Democratic hopes in the state in 2020, when one-term Republican incumbent Senator Thom Tillis will be defending his seat, as will a fair few vulnerable Republicans who just clung on this year, and, of course, the state's 15 electoral votes will be up for grabs.
Obvious targets for the Democrats are visible on the map, primarily the hope of further improvement in the suburbs and the smaller cities, but also rural districts in the Inner and Outer Banks, home of the individualistic Republican congressman Walter Jones in the Third District. May North Carolina's encouraging trends continue and not be stymied by a horrific bit of re-gerrymandering in 2020.
Wait...Arkansas has Democratic unopposed seats? 
And a lot of Republican unopposed seats.
And a lot of Republican unopposed seats.
Some of them look to be African-American majority, in the Delta and in Little Rock. You get that quite a lot in the Deep South - c.f. Alabama, South Carolina.Wait...Arkansas has Democratic unopposed seats?
And a lot of Republican unopposed seats.
Thande
Donor
Nice work on Missouri @Reagent.
Here's Delaware. I can't remember why I made these maps so big when I did the basemaps in 2014. Maybe to make @Umbric Man happy. Anyway, the Democrats picked up one seat each in the north of the state in both house - district 12 in the house and 3 in the senate.
Here's Delaware. I can't remember why I made these maps so big when I did the basemaps in 2014. Maybe to make @Umbric Man happy. Anyway, the Democrats picked up one seat each in the north of the state in both house - district 12 in the house and 3 in the senate.
That was a good election day - and so is this for the map, so thank you for it and the shoutout.
I live in House District 41 and Senate District 20, for the record!