Swing Between the 1796 and 1800 Presidential Elections in Maryland

Welcome back to the blog, apologies for the unannounced hiatus.  Today I'm sharing Election Cartography Corner's third swing map, by Twitter user @ElpisActual.  She takes us way back to the early days of the United States republic by mapping the swing in the presidential vote in Maryland from the 1796 presidential election to the 1800 presidential election.

Thanks to President George Washington declining to run after his second term, 1796 was the first time the USA had a contested presidential election, with multiple candidates and parties actually trying to win.  Washington was officially non-partisan, but leaned Federalist, so President John Adams who succeeded him in 1797 continued that party's control of the executive.  Therefore, when President Thomas Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, it was the first time in American history that there was a peaceful transfer of power between two parties.

 

 

The map shows dramatic swings, which makes sense given the primordial nature of partisanship at the time, as well as the much smaller voting population.  Maryland as a whole did flip from Federalist in 1796 to Democratic-Republican in 1800.
 

Arkansas Gubernatorial Election 2018

Since the Clinton administration, Arkansas has trended more and more Republican.  Twitter user @yeahitsJ0sh points out that Governor Asa Hutchinson increased his margin upon re-election.  Similarly, and despite a Biden gain on Clinton by 43,438 votes, President Donald Trump surpassed his 2016 margin in 2020 by nearly a percentage point in an already very red state.  Josh says:

1. I think at this point, we all expect Sarah Huckabee Sanders to (unfortunately) be the Republican nominee and the next Governor of Arkansas.
Current Governor Asa Hutchinson was reelected in 2018 by a margin of almost 35 points, considerably more than his first win in 2014. pic.twitter.com/Yv5nRoBMTO

— Josh (@yeahitsJ0sh) May 29, 2021

 This is a finely detailed precinct map, so definitely zoom in and check out the insets:

Three Redistricting Possibilities in North Carolina 2021

co-authored by Chris Kirkwood

North Carolina has been subject to extreme partisan gerrymandering by the Republican Party since 2010, resulting in a great deal of litigation.  In 2019, two particularly important court decisions regarding North Carolina were published.

One, from the US Supreme Court, ruled that federal courts could not overturn a gerrymander on the basis of partisanship.  Not only would the federal Congressional districts in North Carolina stay in place, but this was also a major setback to those fighting for fairer maps across the entire country.

The other, from the Superior Court of Wake County, struck down North Carolina’s state Senate and state House districts based on the state constitution, and mandated that they be redrawn under supervision of the court.  This was a reversal; in 2018, Democrats won the majority of the statewide vote but Republicans kept control of both chambers.  Despite the new maps, the state-level results were mixed in 2020, and Republicans retained control of the legislature, and therefore the redistricting process.

Thus the most likely result on the federal House level is some kind of Republican gerrymander.  @bluearrowMaps shows us what that might look like here:

The North Carolina House delegation is currently 8 Republicans and 5 Democrats.  However, North Carolina’s population growth as measured by the 2020 Census led the state to gain an additional seat in the US House.  The result is a 9-5 map, a net Republican gain of +1 seat.

Democratic North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper cannot veto the maps drawn by the legislature, so the Democrats have little leverage, but a remote possibility is a more balanced map.  This 7-3-4 map may better represent the state, which has had a 4% or less margin of victory for the past four presidential cycles:

In a hypothetical world where Democrats controlled the legislature and were gunning for the maximum number of seats, they could pursue a setup like this 5-4-5 map (with all of the 4 competitive seats tilted toward them!):

California Democratic Primary 2020: Top 4 Candidates

 @AveryTheComrade on Twitter brings us this gorgeous map with the following comment:

California was one of 3 states (California, Iowa, Nevada) that Bernie Sanders flipped from the 2016-2020 Democratic primaries, but unlike in 2016 it was much less of a 2-way race. Sanders won with 36% of the vote, 9% above Biden, mostly with support from the lost coast and valley pic.twitter.com/UI6JJFzXru

— Avery 🐸 (@AveryTheComrade) May 16, 2021

The Democratic primary is interesting because of its arcane semi-proportional delegate system.  You earn delegates per House district as well as statewide, but you only win delegates from a place if you get at least 15% of the vote within those geographical boundaries.  This makes a candidate's distribution of votes very important.

This one is worth zooming in on to see some of the nitty-gritty details and fine map-making.