Welcome to the second installment of my series looking at the political geography of the states. In it, I wanted to get a feel for how local Democrats perform in statewide or local elections and how that varies from Obama's 2012 performance. Given how counties are by far the easiest unit to find election data for in various states, I will be looking at how statewide candidates do on a state by state basis by county.
For every state, I've compiled all of the statewide, partisan D vs. R races since 2006 and averaged the results (excluding presidential) to give you an idea of how a generic local Democrat will do on average, assuming a 50-50 race statewide so that even in heavily Democratic or Republican states you can see which areas are relatively more friendly to each party. Using this average Partisan Voter Index (PVI) where the state as a whole is Even, counties where the vote share is more Dem than the state are D+ and those that are more Republican are R+. Additionally, I've mapped out how Obama's 2012 map looks different than how an average Dem does who won or lost by the same margin. Finally, since the 2012 House of Representatives results are almost always presented by the district map, I've mapped out both the results themselves by county as well as by how much the House candidates ran ahead of or behind Obama in 2012.
All of the partisan percentages were calculated using two-party vote share only so as to have the most direct comparison between races. All of the data was taken directly from the relevant state's board of elections or equivalent office. You can find it for download by state here. (Please let me know if you find any errors)
Using the Census Bureau's division of the United States into four general regions, Part 1 covers the West, Part 2 the Midwest, Part 3 the Northeast, and Part 4 the South. Part 5 will look at the US as a whole, specifically the US House of Representatives election from 2012.
Part 2 includes: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
So follow me over the fold for the partisan average charts, a little analysis, and a whole lot of maps.