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Cartographicum Thandeum

And here is the 2016 state house election @Ciclavex .

Yeah it's what you'd expect. Oddly neighbouring New Jersey is much better for contested elections, not sure why. @OwenM did you ever track down anything about their ballot access laws?

I may do the presidential vote by district as well for comparison.

PA state house 2016.png
 
And here is the 2016 state house election @Ciclavex .

Yeah it's what you'd expect. Oddly neighbouring New Jersey is much better for contested elections, not sure why. @OwenM did you ever track down anything about their ballot access laws?

I may do the presidential vote by district as well for comparison.

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My files are at the other end of the country rn, but I'll see what I can do.
 
Here's the presidential vote by state house district @Ciclavex

Trump carried numerous districts with no Republican candidate (especially around Pittsburgh/Allegheny) but conversely there was clearly ticket-splitting going on, as Clinton carried plenty of districts in that competitive zone around Philadelphia which were narrowly held by Republican representatives.

PA 2016 pres by sd.png
 
I suppose the sheer depth of that Democratic dominance in Philly might explain why the Republicans just don't bother.
 
I suppose the sheer depth of that Democratic dominance in Philly might explain why the Republicans just don't bother.
It also shows how the state can be so close overall when it certainly doesn't look like it on a map--not just that the Democrats obviously win the smaller more compact densely populated districts, but also that they win them by much bigger margins than the Republicans do even out in Squiggly Contour Lines territory. There was only one Republican district where Trump got a 60%+ majority, and then not by much IIRC, whereas most of those 60%+ margins in Philadelphia are 80% or 90% margins!
 
Here's the presidential vote by state house district @Ciclavex

Trump carried numerous districts with no Republican candidate (especially around Pittsburgh/Allegheny) but conversely there was clearly ticket-splitting going on, as Clinton carried plenty of districts in that competitive zone around Philadelphia which were narrowly held by Republican representatives.

View attachment 3984

Still wondering though if the Republicans could have won those districts in question, or if it was a sense of "We trust our Democrats to deliver as promised and do a much better job than any Republican candidate, it's the DNC and the Democrats in the congressional leadership that are bonkers!" kind of like how Democrats kept winning local office and even congressional seats in the Deep South well into the 90s.

Do we have any data yet to back up the worrying thesis that the Blue Wall states are each and every one of them the Next West Virginia?
 
It also shows how the state can be so close overall when it certainly doesn't look like it on a map--not just that the Democrats obviously win the smaller more compact densely populated districts, but also that they win them by much bigger margins than the Republicans do even out in Squiggly Contour Lines territory. There was only one Republican district where Trump got a 60%+ majority, and then not by much IIRC, whereas most of those 60%+ margins in Philadelphia are 80% or 90% margins!

My partner's family is from Berks County (a mostly rural area just northwest of Philadelphia) and it is indeed very swingy. While it usually goes for the Republican presidential ticket, it's not by much, and Obama won it in 2008. Of course that's partially due to an urban-rural split of its own: the very Democratic county seat, Reading, was one of the last strongholds of the Socialist Party and is now a post-industrial town with the highest poverty rate of any city in the nation, while places like my partner's tiny hometown are more reliably Republican. But I wouldn't be surprised if that mix of rural and post-industrial was common around the state and the reason that the Republican voteshare is a little more shallow throughout Pennsyltucky than the Dem vote is in the cities.
 
My partner's family is from Berks County (a mostly rural area just northwest of Philadelphia) and it is indeed very swingy. While it usually goes for the Republican presidential ticket, it's not by much, and Obama won it in 2008. Of course that's partially due to an urban-rural split of its own: the very Democratic county seat, Reading, was one of the last strongholds of the Socialist Party and is now a post-industrial town with the highest poverty rate of any city in the nation, while places like my partner's tiny hometown are more reliably Republican. But I wouldn't be surprised if that mix of rural and post-industrial was common around the state and the reason that the Republican voteshare is a little more shallow throughout Pennsyltucky than the Dem vote is in the cities.
Reading is somewhat of an outlier among post-industrial towns in that region, being a majority-Hispanic city, however.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that in history, there have generally been far more unopposed election victories in Alabaman history than there have been contested elections.
 
I like that idea, though obviously if you could do the state legislature boundaries it might be better. Albeit probably a bit difficult to whip up.
 
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