Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Romanoff v. Bennet results

One of the things I found interesting in the results of the Democratic Senate primary was just how widespread Bennet's support was.  Below is a map of the election results.  The reddish counties were won by Bennet (dark red indicates he won by more than 60%).  Bluish counties went to Romanoff (dark blue ones by more than 60%).
Bennet won a majority of the vote in 51 of the state's 64 counties.  He actually won by 60% or more in twenty 21 of them.  Romanoff's support was limited mainly to Denver and a few smaller north-central and south-eastern counties.  Romanoff actually lost in Pueblo County, which he had described as his second home (back when he had a first).

Looking at regression results, it looks like Bennet did better in more conservative, poorer counties.  Also, there seems to be some positive relationship between Obama's performance in the 2008 caucuses and Bennet's performance in yesterday's primary.  The relationship falls a bit short of statistical significance, but there might be something to it is statistically significant at the .01 level, controlling for demographic factors.

Update: Anonymous noticed some data entry problems.  The map and text have been updated.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought Bennet owned Larimer....

Anonymous said...

Your map shows Romanoff winning Larimer County. He lost. Bennet won it 59.15% to 40.85%.

http://www.co.larimer.co.us/2010election/2259.htm

Seth Masket said...

Thanks for picking up on that, Anonymous. I've fixed the problems.