Tag Archives: primary elections

The results of primary voting in DuPage County

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The Daily Herald has an analysis of primary voting for president by Chicago area county. Here are the results for DuPage County:

The heart of this traditional Republican stronghold is bright red, with the central areas of the county and south through much of Naperville full of precincts that turned out big for the GOP primary. The same goes for the southeastern part of the county, including Downers Grove,

Overall, more than 17,000 more Republicans than Democrats turned out in DuPage, bucking the statewide trend.

But there’s Democratic blue in the DuPage County part of Aurora, as well as in Addison Township. That kind of Democratic turnout could hint at why Obama was able to pull off wins in DuPage County in the last two presidential elections.

Two quick thoughts:

  1. Displaying the data in a map like this is very helpful as you can quickly see the different bases of support for the two political parties. Additionally, showing the size of the margin of victory for the leading party is much better than just showing who won.
  2. The voting patterns show some correlations with demographic patters: more Republican areas are whiter and wealthier while more Democratic areas are less wealthy and more diverse. Again, seeing this on a map helps make those connections – as long as you know a few things about the spatial dimensions of the county.

The difficulties of polling for primary elections

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Some polls about recent primary races in several states have been off. In a report from ABC, some of the difficulties in predicting primary elections are discussed:

Experts say this year’s primaries are highlighting some of the pitfalls of political polling.

“As a general rule, primaries are much harder to predict than general elections,” said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research. “The hard part is figuring out who’s going to show up.”

Pollsters say developing a fundamental sense of who is going to vote is harder to do in primary elections when turnout is historically lower and more variable. There’s also the early and absentee voting factor.

This sounds like a sampling issue. Political polls tend to search for people who are likely to vote. But if a large percent of the sample that pollsters reach aren’t going to vote, the results are not very trustworthy.