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 There were two A.P. stories in the Bismarck Tribune today about demographics and numbers and how and where Obama did better and/or McCain did better. The stories were about trends and minor changes. Since there wasn't much on North Dakota, I thought it might make sense to do a little breakdown on what happened in North Dakota.
While Mike Jacobs, a writer for John Hoeven's parent company, ForumComm, writes about how badly Democrats did last week, I thought I'd give a different perspective; one based upon irrefutable numbers and not just on high-minded, touchy-feely, limp-wristed journalist speak. Most of you know that Barack Obama did about 20 points better in North Dakota than did John Kerry in 2004. That is not a slow and steady improvement; it is a huge leap forward for Democratic support. I thought it was interesting, but I wanted to do a North Dakota county-by-county comparison of the Bush-Kerry election outcome compared to the McCain-Obama election outcome, and the other North Dakota outcomes. In doing so, here are some things I found that I thought were interesting: The Presidential Race in North Dakota - Looking simply at percentages of total votes in all of North Dakota's counties, Obama did better than Kerry in every North Dakota county except for one: Dunn County. In Dunn County, Obama's margin went down .14%, compared to Kerry.
- Before you Dunn County McCain fans start celebrating, you should know that the Republican (Bush-McCain) margin went down more, by percentage, than the Democratic margin dropped (-.71% for Bush-McCain vs. -.14% for Kerry-Obama)
- Dunn County cast 1,774 presidential votes in 2004 but lost 133 of those votes (or 7.5%) for 2008.
- If the Republicans and Democrats both did worse in Dunn County in 2004 than they did in 2008, where - you might ask -- did the votes go in Dunn County? Ralph Nader picked up an extra 13 votes and the libertarian candidate picked up one additional vote.
- If someone has an explanation for these Dunn County anomalies, I'd be very interested to hear it. Who are these people?!?
- Burke County (in Northwestern N.D.) had the largest drop in presidential votes. It went from 1,165 presidential voters in 2004 to 941 presidential voters in 2008. That is a 19.23% drop. Though Burke County voted overwhelmingly for McCain (67.91%), Obama (30.29%) got 1.45 point more of the total vote than did Kerry in 2004. Not a substantial number, but it's something.
- Sioux County (a west-river Indian reservation county in south central N.D.) had a 20% increase in turnout for the presidential election in 2008 when compared to turnout in 2004. It went from 1,140 votes in 2004 to 1,376 in 2008. Sioux County voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama (83.14%) over John McCain (15.63%), showing a 12.61 point increase in the county's margin of victory in relation to Sioux County's preference for Kerry (70.53%) over George W. Bush (27.98%) in 2004.
- There are 53 counties in North Dakota. The average change in margin of win for the Republican candidate (from 2004 to 2008) was -7.89 points (or an average 7.89 point improvement for the Democrat). This number is mostly meaningless because county size is not determined by population, and land doesn't vote (people vote). So we need to look at the number of actual votes in each county. But I will note that the advantage increases to an 8.21 point pro-Dem shift in 2008 vs. 2004 when you break it down by legislative district instead of by county. The 8.21 point number has a lot more meaning since legislative districts are supposed to have roughly the same population.
- The county with the most presidential voters was Cass County, with 71,319 in 2008. Burleigh County had the second most voters, with 41,630. Then Grand Forks County with 31,106, then Ward County with 25,578 and then Morton County with 13,242. The county with the fewest presidential voters in 2008 was Slope County with 411. Billings had the second smallest number with 499 voters.
- 1. Cass County (the Fargo area) is the most densely populated county in the state. Cass County increased its number of voters from 2004 to 2008 by 4,608 (6.91%) and went from supporting Bush (59.39%) over Kerry (38.99%) to supporting Obama (52.69%) over McCain (45.59%). For those of you keeping score at home, that is a 13.8 point erosion of support for the Republican and a 13.7 point increase in support for the Democrat. It would be folly to call that an insignificant shift.
- 2. Burleigh County (the Bismarck area) supported both Bush and McCain, but McCain's margin was 7.5 points smaller than Bush's was in 2004. Like Cass County, Burleigh County's turnout also increased, but by 7.26 points; a larger increase in turnout than Cass County's (by percentage).
- 3. Grand Forks County went from supporting Bush (54.77%) over Kerry (41.50%) to supporting Obama (51.69%) over McCain (46.61%). That is better than a 10% erosion of support for the Republican candidate. Grand Forks County experienced a slight increase in voter turnout going from 30,470 voters in 2004 to 31,106 voters in 2008, a 2.09% increase.
- 4. Ward County (the Minot area) supported Bush (66.41%) over Kerry (32.16%) and supported McCain (58.79%) over Obama (39.58%). That's about an improvement of 7.5 points for the Democratic presidential candidate. Ward County experienced a loss of 34 voters from 2004 to 2008.
- 5. Rounding out North Dakota's "Big Five" counties, Morton County (the Mandan area) supported Bush (65.9%) over Kerry (32.24%) and supported McCain (59.3%) over Obama (38.31%). That's another 6.6 point erosion in support for the Republican presidential candidate. Morton County experienced an increase of nearly 5% in presidential voter turnout. It looks like all those new voters may have voted for the Democrat.
- * Although Slope County (in Southwestern N.D.) supported Bush (77.55%) over Kerry (20.6%), the Republicans lost over 5 points of their presidential support in that county. It went to McCain (72.26%) over Obama (25.79%). It should also be noted that Slope county lost three of its six precinct polling locations, and lost almost 5% of its presidential voters. While Billings County lost over 11% of its total number of voters, McCain did about 8 points worse than Bush did in '04. Billings County did not lose any of its precinct polling locations.
If you want to look at spreadsheets I used for this stuff, let me know. I'll likely share it with y'all. To view a graphical/map version of these numbers, here's the DailyKos map of North Dakota. (If you move your mouse over the counties, you'll see their numbers, and you can change the year over on the left.) The New York Times map is also very, very interesting. Click here for that map. Once you click on that, click on "voting shifts" which is to the left of the map, then click on North Dakota (on the map) to zoom in and see what the trend looked like county-by-county in North Dakota.
The Statewide Races To be sure, John "ForumComm (R)" Hoeven (R) and Kelly Schmidt (R) did better in '08 than they did 4 years ago. I think part of the reason Hoeven did better is that he tried to run as (1) a ghost; and (2) a Democrat (though not a very good one). Hard to do, but he's pulled it off so far. Think about the positions he's taken during the election. Cutting property taxes by more properly funding education. You can't get more Democratic than that. He's a former bureaucrat at our socialistic state bank. He took the progressive/liberal position on all four initiated measures. Regarding Kelly Schmidt, Mitch Vance (D) just didn't have enough time to put together the case against Kelly Schmidt once he hit his stride. It's pretty clear Schmidt's hand has been in the cookie jar; she just hasn't been caught yet. But she will be. And she spent a lot of money to counter the legitimate criticisms raised by Vance. She can only hide her misdeeds for so long. - State Auditor: Compared to 4 years ago, Bob Peterson's (R) margin of victory was cut by about 3.6 points by Daryl Splichal (D), who ran his campaign on a shoestring budget.
- Insurance Commissioner: Adam Hamm's (R) margin of victory was 14 points lower than his predecessor's margin of victory in '04.
- Public Service Commissioner: Brian Kalk's (R) margin was 12 points lower than Kevin Cramer's margin 4 years ago (in a presidential year). * This is a tough one to compare because Cheryl Bergian ran for a different open PSC seat 2 years ago. Some might argue I should compare the '08 result to the '06 result, but that would be disregarding the fact that '06 was not a presidential election year.
The State Legislative Races I'm about tired of hearing North Dakota Republicans gloat about how badly they trounced the Democratic-NPL party in the 2008 election. They're pretty bold about it, too. Lots of back-slapping and chest-bumping. Lots of "knucks" and high-fives. Lots of "in-the-Dems'-face" tough-guy talk. It's not very statesmanlike. It's a bit on the immature side. But I think the story is a little deeper than just "the Republicans man-handled the Democrats." Let's break this thing down. - There are 47 legislative districts in North Dakota. Even numbered districts -- 23 of them -- had legislative races in 2008 and 2004. One 2008 senate race remains unresolved, with a mandatory recount still pending in District 12 where the preliminary results suggest David Nething (R) with a lead (for now) of 10 votes over John Grabinger (D).
- Democrats picked up one senate seat in 2008 (Mac Schneider in District 42 [Grand Forks]) and lost one senate seat (Harvey Tallackson in Walsh county) for a zero net gain/loss.
- One thing that's a little tricky about looking at statistics/numbers for the legislative races is that there are -- and have been -- uncontested race in North Dakota. Where those races switch from uncontested to contested -- or vice versa -- the statistics get thrown way out of whack. For example, in District 4, John Warner had a challenger in 2004, but no challenger this year, so if you were to include the numbers from those two races in a global comparison, Warner's numbers would make it look like he went from winning 57% to 42% to winning 100% to 0%. (And there are several other races where these kinds of flips would skew any meaningful analysis.) While technically accurate to say Warner went from 57% to 100%, it's not really fair or meaningful to lump that in with all the contested races. Because of these numbers, it's hard to put together a meaningful number such as "average increase/decrease in Dem strength in all senate races," because you either have to leave out those races, or leave them in and let them skew the numbers. Since I don't claim to be a statistician, I don't claim to have a meaningful way to give these kinds of numbers.
- There are a lot of districts in which the Dem-NPL candidates had incredibly tough odds against them. In a lot of districts, the Republican had won by 60/40 or, in some instances, 70/30 four years ago. For example, Bob Stenehjem (R) had garnered 70% of the votes in District 30 (Bismarck) in 2004. That was a huge margin for Chris Ebertz to take on. Robert Erbele (R) in District 28 also got nearly 70% in 2004. Alan Bergman had a tough row to hoe there. But both of these Republicans had about 10 points (or more) of their votes knocked out from under them. That's not an insignificant whack. Ebertz and Bergman deserve an "attaboy" for their efforts against such tough odds.
- There are some districts where margin of victory changes in the Senate races are worth mentioning. Jim Bartlett (R) in District 6 had his margin of victory cut by 7 points compared to 2004. Dave Nething (R) in District 12 had his margin of victory cut by over 1.6 points, and could potentially lose his seat. Jerry Klein (R) in District 14 won but had his margin of victory cut by nearly 6 points compared to 2004. Gary Lee (R) in District 22 had his margin of victory cut by almost 5.5 points. Bob Stenehjem (R) won in District 30 (Bismarck), but his margin of victory dropped by a staggering 9+ points compared to his race in in 2004. Robert Erbele (R) in District 28 won, but his margin was knocked down by almost 11.5 points. Dwight Cook (R) in District 34 (Mandan) won, but his margin took a nearly 8.5 point hit. Karen Krebsbach (R) in District 40 won, but her margin was cut by almost 12 points. Nate Martindale (R) in District 42, a former UND student body president and a member of the state board of higher ed, trying to fill the shoes of former Senator Nick Hacker, got about 7 points fewer votes than did Hacker in '04, and lost. Tom Fischer (R) in District 46 had his margin of victory cut by over 10 points. Were I to do a complete listing here, you'd see that in some districts, Republicans did a little better than their cohorts did 4 years ago, but not very many of them and -- in almost all instances -- not by as much. There's a fair amount of good that went on for Democratic-NPL senate candidates last week, even though Democrats didn't take the state senate.
- There are North Dakota House of Representative races worth mentioning too. Consider these (the numbers in the parenteticals are the margin changes):
District 4: Republican -- (-3.78) District 6: Republican 1 (-4.39); Republican 2 (-2.69) District 8: Republican 1 (-1.78); Republican 2 (-.73) District 10: Republican 1 (-2.68); Republican 2 (-.94) District 14: Republican 1 (-.82); Republican 2 (+.53) District 16: Republican 1 (-13.29); Republican 2 (-7.47) * (this is one where one seat was uncontested 4 years ago; but also, keep in mind a Democratic-NPLer won one of the seats in District 16 this year.) District 18: Republican (-4.22) District 22: Republican 1 (-4.21); Republican 2 (-3.96) District 28: Republican 1 (-3.59); Republican 2 (-6.06) District 30: Republican 1 (-4); Republican 2 (-1.99) * (This one is worth noting in that Republican 2, here, is Dave Weiler, who got fewer votes than newcomer Mike Nathe. There were 831 new votes in this race in 2008, and Weiler actually got fewer votes this year (3,884) than he got four years ago (3,892). I've heard some speculate that his vote count took a hit because of his sponsorship of the radical tax measure, Measure 1. I don't know what to think about that.) District 34: Republican 1 (-10.72); Republican 2 (-10.54) * (Again, you almost can't count these numbers because there was only one Dem challenger in 2004 and two in 2008.) District 36: Republican 1 (-.36); Republican 2 (-1.44) District 38: Republican 1 (-3.13); Republican 2 (-2.5) District 40: Republican 1 (-6.43); Republican 2 (-7.28) District 42: Republican 1 (-2.02); Republican 2 (-4.68) District 44: Republican 1 (-1.97); Republican 2 (-1.3) District 46: Republican 1 (-1.51); Republican 2 (-1.85) (Districts 12, 20, 24 and 26 are districts where Dem-NPL candidates won. Republicans did a little better this year in District 32)
- Some of these numbers are fairly insignificant, but you can't deny that they show a trend. Republicans suffered margin hits in virtually every state legislative race. Not all were big hits, but almost all took hits.
- In his book "Taking on the System," Markos Moulitsas devotes an entire chapter to the idea that incremental change is still change. I think what we saw in last weeks election was nearly universally positive for Democrats, but just not an a massive, grand scale. It was an incrementally positive election for Democrats in North Dakota. The hard part is telling that to the Dem-NPL candidates who worked their asses off, made huge and impressive gains, but who didn't win. My hat goes off to those candidates.
- Who was it that said "Sometimes the bridge to liberty is built with dead bodies"?
It must suck to be one of those bodies. If you can't get to liberty unless you have a bridge, and if your only building material is solid Democratic-NPL candidate's bodies, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I'm hoping that during the next legislative session, the Republicans try to act like they've gotten some kind of big mandate to kick the Democrats around. These trends show they clearly don't have a mandate. Or, if they do, it's less of a mandate than they've had in recent years. Their support across the state and across the board is dwindling. Slowly, but surely. Slow and steady wins the race. [Note: Somewhere along the way while writing this, I realized I was using "%" interchangably with "points." I tried to go through and clean up all the errors in that regard, but I probably missed some. If you see any of these or other errors, let me know and I'll clean them up. Thanks.]
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