February 13, 2008
The District is Obama Country
Though the map may appear as if Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) did well in many Northwest neighborhoods, she only managed to keep Obama under 60 percent of the vote in ten precincts. Her strongest showing was Precinct 3, the neighborhood including the Watergate, some G.W. housing, and the Foggy Bottom Historic District; but she still lost to Obama in a 275-243 vote.
While his margin of victory was large in almost all precincts, Obama overwhelmingly won precincts east of Georgia Avenue, precincts in Northeast, and the precincts East of the Anacostia River. The voters in the dark blue areas in the above map went more than 80 percent for Obama, and some reached close to 90 percent. The darkest blue area on the map--Precinct 97, near the eastern point of the District--gave Obama 100 percent of its vote according to the BOEE, but the reported results contained only ten votes, which is less than one percent turnout. Voting officials may want to review that precinct, as that seems unlikely.
We'll leave you readers to interpret the results, but recommend against the folly of divvying the results into class, social, or racial categories. District voters are largely in agreement about their preferred presidential candidate, and braying about the difference between one neighborhood that voted 65 percent for Obama and another that voted 72 percent would be silly.
You can access an interactive version of the image above in Google Maps (minimize the categories and unclick the "labels" box), or find a slightly more robust version in Google Earth. You can access a Google Earth KML file directly here.
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Pretty.
Part of me wants to believe that this is payback for Hillary and her chubby-chasing boyfriend talking a lot of talk about DC voting rights but not actually DOING anything about it for 8 FREAKING YEARS. I still remember Bill parading down Georgia Avenue in '92 saying how he was going to bring voting rights and prosperity, but he NEEDED YOUR VOTE.
And part of me thinks that Hillary, unlike her husband, just isn't Black enough.
I love that the two precincts that went to either extreme (albeit extremes on the Obama end) almost perfectly oppose each other geographically along the same line of latitude.
And no matter what the plea against folly in the article says, this map quite nearly perfectly matches a demographics map of the District... nothing wrong with that. It's just interesting.
wow, precinct 19 (my home sweet home)
909 - Obama
182 - Clinton
the shocking thing to me is that she actually got nearly 200 votes. i would have guessed she was heading for 50, tops...
guess the ultra-high turnout trumped expectations.
Eddy Elfenbein has a great post on his site with more demographic data and a good spreadsheet of all results, including Republicans. I'd recommend checking it out as well. - Adam
blue is for boy, pink is for girl?
There's nothing like varying shades of pink and purple to show the difference between where Obama and Clinton won!
Seriously, whoever decided on those colors needs a slap upside the head.
So, in my precinct, the 25th, Huckabee got as many votes (twelve) as Edwards (ten) and Kucinich (two) combined. Wow.
Huckabee got as many (or as few, depending on how you want to see it) votes as two chumps who aren't in the race. Why is that a wow?
It's just stunning to me how lopsided the vote is. The number two Republican candidate for the nomination (and granted, he's trailing far behind McCain, but still!) garnered only as many votes as two Democrats (was it really necessary to call them chumps?) who aren't even in the race anymore. That, to me, is remarkable. Ergo, "wow." Do you still have a problem with it?
LOVE the map. BTW, did anyone else bother to check up on the voting results for that one precinct that sort of stands out on the extreme eastern edge of the District??? Fun stuff.
Zero votes cast in precinct 97? Voter apathy or election fraud.. stay tuned!