Thanks for doing this. City wide analysis is meaningless.

So it’s better to use these neighborhood numbers for comparisons – Coakley got about 96% of the vote in Mattapan vs. about 50% of the vote in West Roxbury. Whether Coakley won or lost West Roxbury by a percent or so is not so important in the bigger scheme of things.

Some day soon, I’ll try to re-calculate the precinct-to-neighborhood reference. Unless someone has a better idea, I’ll link a precinct to the neighborhood that has the biggest plurality of votes.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tUBUKkiZIU9xtDhIv6qkOTA&output=html

FYI: The 11/2009 Boston voter file has 20-6 as 89% in West Roxbury (zip = 02132, 02467) and 20-7 as 34% in West Roxbury (zip = 02132)

This encapsulates all the political issues, local/national that we’re now wrestling with.

I’d also say that geographical patterns overlay Coakley’s (and the Dem Pty’s) inability to line up deep, active unity behind her from among the 3 she defeated and other key Democrats.

Scott Brown may yet prove himself a “moderate” in republican terms. If not, there’s 2012. And even before that, there’s this year. So we have some challenges and opportunities before us.

1. There is no single reason for Brown’s win. Candidate and campaign factors, national and state factors, all played a role and it will take a little time to sort the causes out.

2. I think Brown won the votes of many people who think the Obama Administration is failing to do enough to help average people. If money and resources from the financial bailout had gone to struggling households and communities (Main St) not greedy financiers, bankers and corporate kings (Wall St), Brown’s claims to be the candidate for change would not work. Two recent polls support have documented this. See MoveOn http://pol.moveon.org/brownpoll/results.html

3. Coakley made mistakes like Kerry did in 2004, losing the symbolic war to bond with average people. When Coakley and Obama attacked and made fun of Brown’s pick-up truck, they attacked an important symbol of people from the working class and reinforced Republicans’ message that Democrats don’t really understand and serve the common people but are ideologically driven.

4. Nationally, Obama’s rhetorical and procedural emphasis on bipartisanship and “reaching across the aisle” have allowed conservatism to survive. By emphasizing bipartisanship, Obama and the national Democratic Party have not made a serious attempt to define Republican conservatism as the backward negative philosophy that it is and have failed to educate Americans about its phony rhetoric and message that covers its exploitive and harmful effects on average people. also, by seeking Republican support on legislation, his proposals have not been as bold or strong as his supporters expected and he has lost support from his liberal and progressive base. See Drew Weston at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/obama-finally-gets-his-vi_b_429232.html

5. Disappointment with Pres. Obama is, for Massachusetts voters, liberals and independents, a second hit. First Gov. Patrick and now Obama. Both campaigned on “hope” and “change.” Rather than bring his supporters into the process and stay engaged with his supporters, Gov. Patrick closed his campaign organization after winning election and proceeded to take positions that were not supported by his constituents and alienated his base.

6. And so Scot Brown, a wealthy conservative Republican could run as a “man of the people” against the Massachusetts machine, against big government and elitist Democrats out of touch with real people.

7. The moral of the story? Keep your base engaged. Define your opponent and call conservatism what it is. Be bold and challenge the powerful.

There were definitely turnout changes and increased % of the vote at the county level. I basically did that for Coakley 2010 vs. Deval Patrick 2006 percentages. But it shoudn’t be too hard to do the same thing with the raw vote counts. Patrick got 55% of the vote statewide in 2006, so that’s a good recent indicator. The last Repbublican to win state-wide was Romney for Governor in 2002 with 49.2% of the vote vs. 44.4 for O’Brien (D).

In other words: Where did Brown do better than expected, and by how much (again, votes, not %)?

In the NJ Gov race of 2009, two traditional GOP counties more than doubled their expected pluralities for the Republican candidate. Instead of winning by 30K votes,as statewide candidates had traditionally done, GOPer Chris Christie won by 65K to 70K votes.

I am trying to find out if anything like this took place in Massachusetts. Any insight / analysis would be appreciated.