As a way of attempting to deal with my despair over the presidential election, I decided to do a bunch of manual Excel number crunching to analyze the election. Here are some interesting facts culled from the current county voting data.
This is the largest voter turnout ever: over 115 million votes placed. This is also the largest number of voters to ever vote for the winner of a presidential election: 59.3 million. However, it’s the second largest number of voters ever to vote AGAINST the winner: 55.8 million voters. The largest number of voters to vote against the winner was in 1992, when voters for Perot and Bush 42 placed 59 million votes against Clinton, who won with 45 million votes. It IS the largest number of voters to ever vote for a single losing candidate.
And Bush thinks he’s going to be able to unite the nation? Ha ha! We’re more divided than ever!
Largest % of Bush voters in counties with over 100,000 votes
Utah County, Utah – 87.9%
Davis County, Utah – 79.8%
Montgomery County, Texas – 78.5%
St. Tammany County, Louisiana – 75.0%
Hamilton County, Indiana – 74.7%
Other top tens: Ottawa County, Michigan; Colin County, Texas; Denton County, Texas; Waukesha County, Wisconsin; Kern County, California.
Note to self: stay out of Utah and Texas.
Largest % of Kerry voters in counties with over 100,000 votes
District of Columbia – 90.0%
San Francisco County, California – 84.4%
Baltimore City (County), Maryland – 82.7%
Bronx County, New York – 82.6%
Prince George’s County, Maryland – 82.1%
Open top tens: Manhattan County, New York; St. Louis City (County), Missouri; Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania; Boston County, Massachusetts; Orleans County, Louisiana.
Do a little dance for living in the right place.
Most Bush Voters
Los Angeles County, California – 955,000
Cook County, Illinois – 584,000
Harris County, Texas – 581,000
Maricopa County, Arizona – 540,000
Orange County, California – 456,000
Most Kerry Voters
Los Angeles County, California – 1,670,000
Cook County, Illinois – 1,390,000
Harris County, Texas – 472,000
Maricopa County, Arizona – 404,000
Orange County, California – 300,000
Interesting that both sets of top-five “mosts” are the same counties, and in the same order. Guess they’re just big areas! Also interesting to note the massive drop-off from #2 to #3 for Kerry.
Biggest Turnout
Los Angeles County, California
Cook County, Illinois
Harris County, Texas
Maricopa County, Arizona
Wayne County, Michigan
San Diego County, California
Orange County, California
Miami-Dade County, Florida
King County, Washington
Broward County, Florida
Not much to say about this, except to note that most these places sound very, very familiar from the campaign.
The Nader Factor
Of the counties with the highest percentage of Nader voters, for counties over 100,000 voters, eight are in New York, one in Utah, and one in Alaska.
The largest number of Nader voters came from Suffolk County, New York (13,300, or 2.14%).
Uhhhh…
State and Local Issues
In San Francisco County, I voted for 31 state and local issues. 18 of my votes were successful. 12 of my votes matched the SF Republican Party, 16 the SF Green Party, and 23 the SF Demo Party. (Note that when party “no opinion” votes are taken into account, those numbers move to 15/25/23.)
What surprises me about this is that I’ve always felt my views were more in line with the Greens than the Democrats. Huh.
Whew.
All in all I still find the whole thing depressing. But at least that gave me something to do for a few hours. 🙂