Bob LeLievre's Blog – "The" source for Massachusetts election data

January 22, 2010

Update # 5 – 2010 Mass. Senate General – Boston Results

Filed under: demographics, Election Results, voter turnout — Tags: , , , , , , — Bob LeLievre @ 10:54 am

Here are some details of the Boston results.  Boston is by far the largest city in Massachusetts and I’ve been tracking election results there for 20+ years.  This is useful because I can really drill down into neighborhood demographics to make candidate and turnout observations, since most Boston neighborhoods can be clearly-defined by racial make-up and by historical patterns of turnout rates and candidate ideology support (liberal vs. moderate vs. conservative).

Boston numbers reinforce what we already know:

  • The strongest Democratic base (non-white voters) voted very strongly for Coakley, but turnout (ie – voter excitement) was relatively low.  Message to Democratic Party operative:  Don’t ignore your base – Push for turnout in these communities – Democratic candidates will get 90+% of the votes here!
  • Moderate-voting white voters  had lukewarm support for Coakley, voters that she needed to win.
Below is a chart that summarizes the neighborhood data.  Here’s link to a spreadsheet with full neighborhood details:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tM21Wvf03LSOOKZNXF6SeJA&output=html

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Update # 4 – 2010 Mass. Senate General – Poll Summary

Filed under: Election Results — Tags: , , , , , , — Bob LeLievre @ 8:36 am

There are no official exit polls made available to the public, to the lament of many:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/19/massachusetts-exit-polls_n_428655.html

But there were a couple of polls done on or near election day that give us some final insight:

AFL-CIO poll of 810 voters on election night:

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/upload/mass_elections.pdf

Highlights:

  • There was a 15 point gender gap:  men by +13 points for Brown vs. women by +2 points for Coakley.
  • College grads were +5 points for Coakley, non-college voters were +20 points for Brown.  It’s not clear if “non-college” means not a college grad, or did not attend college at all.  I’d guess not attending at all.
  • Union members voted for Brown 49% vs. Coakley 46%.
  • Brown’s personal rating:  51% positive vs. 32% negative (net +19 points).
  • Coakley’s personal rating:  40% positive vs. 37% negative (net +3 points).
  • Lots of issue-related numbers too.

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January 21, 2010

Update # 3 – 2010 Mass. Senate General – City/Town Results

Filed under: Election Results — Tags: , , , , , — Bob LeLievre @ 1:35 pm

Here are some details of the Mass. Senate election, looking at individual city/town results.   As I described in my county analysis post ( http://wp.me/pn4iD-5J ), the 2006 Governor race won by Deval Patrick (55%) with a similar turnout is a good indicator of where a Democrat must do well to win state-wide.

Here are some turnout highlights:
  • State-wide turnout was 53%.
  • The highest turnout (71% to 76%) was mostly in smaller (<10,000 registered voters), high-income towns like Sherborn, Dover, Norfolk, Westwood, Bolton, Medfield, Stow, Topsfield, Berlin, Cohasset, Concord, and Harvard.
  • The lowest turnout was mostly in lower-income, non-white urban cities like Lawrence (25%), Chelsea (32%), Springfield (34%), Holyoke + Southbridge (35%), New Bedford (36%), Worcester + Fall River (37%), Lynn (38%), and Lowell (39%).
  • Following the conventional wisdom of voter turnout (see below), this was expected, but the range was much wider than it was in the 2006 General.  In that election, Patrick motivated those low-income/non-white voters to turn out at a higher rate.
    • The biggest drops in turnout from 2006 to 2010 (minus 8 to 13 percentage points) were in places like Lawrence, New Bedford, Chelsea, Fall River, and Worcester.   These are mostly places where Coakley did well and Patrick did very well.
    • The biggest gains in turnout from 2006 to 2010 (plus 5 to 7 percentage points) were in places like Norfolk, North Attleborough,Wrentham, Douglas, Franklin, Plainville, and Weymouth.  These are almost all places where Brown was very strong, with at least 64% of the vote.

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January 20, 2010

Update # 2 – 2010 Mass. Senate General – County Results

Filed under: Election Results, voter turnout — Tags: , , , , , , — Bob LeLievre @ 8:23 pm

Here are some details of the Mass. Senate election, looking at county results.  For a few weeks after the primary, the conventional wisdom was the Coakley would win easily by 10-20% with maybe a 30-40% turnout (primary turnout was 20%).  A good, recent comparison election was the 2006 Governor’s race where Deval Patrick (D) won 55% to 35% against Kerry Healey (R), and indicates where a Democrat like Coakley needed to do well to win state-wide.

There are lot of pundits and pollsters (see links below) with opinions on why Brown won, like winning big with the unenrolled voters.  My niche is to focus on the numbers.  Those numbers show Coakley needed a higher turnout and a higher % of the vote in traditional Democratic strongholds to win.

Here are some county highlights and Below is a chart that highlights the differences in candidate performance and turnout in the 2010 and 2006 elections:

  • Coakley got 47% of the vote state-wide.
  • Coakley did best in Western Mass. counties like Berkshire (75%), Franklin (70%), and Hampshire (67%).  She also did well in Suffolk (70%) which is mostly Boston.
  • Coakley did worst in counties like Plymouth (35%), Worcester (38%), and Barnstable/Essex/Hampden/Bristol/Norfolk (42-44%)
  • Coakley got 8 percentage points less of the state-wide vote than Patrick did in 2006 (47% vs. 55%).  The biggest drops were in Worcester (-15%), Bristol (-14%), Hampden (-11%).   The smallest drops were in Middlesex, Suffolk, and Barnstable (-4%).
  • The state-wide turnout counts in 2006 vs. 2010 were very close.  But there were fewer registered voters in 2006 (lots of new registrations in 2008), so the difference was -2.9% (53% in 2010 vs. 56% in 2006).
  • The biggest drops in turnout in 2010 vs. 2006 were in the counties where Coakley did well, such as Berkshire (-5.6%), Franklin (-5.4%), Suffolk (-5.4%).  The smallest drops in turnout were in counties where Brown did well, such as Norfolk (+0.5%), Plymouth (-1.0%), and Barnstable (-2.2%).
  • The % turnout in 2010 also mirrored the results, where turnout was generally higher in counties where Brown did well.
  • Turnout was highest in Barnstable (62%), Norfolk (61%), and Middlesex (58%).
  • Turnout was lowest in Suffolk (41%), Hampden (45%), Berkshire (48%), and Bristol (48%).

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Update # 1 – 2010 Mass. Senate General Election Results

Filed under: Election Results — Tags: , , , , , , — Bob LeLievre @ 3:20 pm

Here are the “official” unofficial results as of 1/20/2010:

State-wide Results:
  • Scott Brown votes (Republican) = 1,168,607 (52%)
  • Martha Coakley votes (Democrat) = 1,058,682 (47%)
  • Joe Kennedy votes (Libertarian) = 22,237 (1.0%)
  • Total Voter Turnout =2,249,026
  • Registered Voter Count = 4.22 million
  • Statewide Turnout = 53%
  • Comparison Election  – 2006 General for Governor:
    • Patrick (Dem) = 55%
    • Healey (Rep) = 35%
    • Mihos (Ind) = 7%
    • Ross (Green) = 2%
Result highlights:

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January 19, 2010

2010 Mass. Senate General Election Results

Filed under: Election Results — Tags: , , , , , — Bob LeLievre @ 3:16 pm

I will be posting detailed election and turnout results on Wednesday 1/20/2010 as the raw data becomes available.

For the primary on 12/8/2009, the Boston Globe website (www.boston.com) was the only place I know of that posted town-by-town results. The Globe seems to get an exclusive on this kind of election day data, which is odd since it is a public record. Unfortunately, the Globe no longer seems to have the resources to do much detailed analysis of election result numbers anymore. Historically, the Secretary of State’s office (http://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleidx.htm) does a lousy job of publishing election results.

For the primary, final results for all 351 cities/towns were posted by 1am on Wednesday morning. Since the general turnout will be much higher than the primary (834K), it will probably take longer to tabulate the final counts. By the way, my prediction for today’s turnout is 1.8 million.

If you have any data to share, please email it to boblelievre@gmail.com

See lots of old results here:

http://bostonmaelections.wordpress.com

Thanks.

- Bob

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