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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Decoding the Districts
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| Contributor | Karma Policeman |
| Last Edited | Karma Policeman Mar 25, 2009 12:54am |
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| Category | Blog Entry |
| News Date | Wednesday, March 25, 2009 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description |
If you've been poring over the presidential results-by-congressional district data that we've compiled, you've probably noticed that there are a whole lot of districts that flipped from being won by Bush in 04 to Obama in 08 (64 of them, to be exact), and only one that flipped from Kerry to McCain. That's interesting enough, and other analysts have already delved into that... but I decided to look at one more data point, and also factor in what the district did in 2000.
When I start talking about districts in terms of them being "GBM" or "BBO" or "GBO" it may sound like I'm talking in terms of genetic code. I'm using those as shorthand for how the district performed in the last three elections: being won by Gore/Bush/McCain, or Bush/Bush/Obama, for instance. In a way, though, we are very much talking about the genetic code for each district, because each of these classifications reveals a lot about what kind of political ecosystem the district is located in.
Over 80% of all House districts are either Bush/Bush/McCain or Gore/Kerry/Obama; not so interesting. I'm concerned with the remaining 75 districts. Many of them aren't what you'd traditionally think of as swing districts, but rather red districts in blue states that got pushed along by Obama's strong performance in those states. Time will tell whether these become the "new" swing seats, or if they fall back as the blue wave passes. These fall largely into the "BBO" category: |
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