Swing State Project is pleased to announce a final and official tally of the presidential election results in all 435 congressional districts. As you might recall, when we last left off a few weeks ago, we were still six districts shy, with only Nassau County, NY and Tuscaloosa County, AL outstanding. With these last few counties relinquishing their data, we can wrap up those last few districts, making Swing State Project the first outlet anywhere, blogosphere or elsewhere, to provide a full public release of presidential election results by CD… not just of percentages, but a transparent display of the underlying precincts, if you’re interested in delving that deep. If you want to bookmark the summary of the percentages for all districts for future reference, click here.
If you’re looking for additional detail about previously-discussed districts, see waves one, two, three, four, five, and six. For a truly ridiculous level of detail, each state’s database is accessible through our master database.
| District | Obama # | McCain # | Other # | 2008 % | 2004 % | 2000 % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL-06 | 74,657 | 243,465 | 2,625 | 23.3/75.9 | 22/78 | 25/74 |
| AL-07 | 179,227 | 67,554 | 895 | 72.4/27.3 | 64/35 | 66/33 |
| NY-02 | 164,106 | 125,978 | 2,272 | 56.1/43.1 | 53/45 | 57/39 |
| NY-03 | 149,995 | 164,682 | 2,654 | 47.3/51.9 | 47/52 | 52/44 |
| NY-04 | 171,346 | 122,166 | 1,945 | 58.0/41.4 | 55/44 | 59/38 |
| NY-05 | 128,276 | 73,143 | 1,431 | 63.2/36.1 | 63/36 | 67/30 |
As you can see, AL-06 was one of our roughest districts, in about a three-way tie with AL-04 and TX-13 for worst Obama performance. And while Obama won Nassau County on Long Island by a decent margin, he didn’t improve on Kerry’s numbers by much. In fact, the 2008 numbers in both NY-03 (the Republican part of Long Island, relatively speaking) and NY-05 (a mix of Nassau County’s wealthiest areas and working-class white and Asian parts of Queens) matched the 2004 numbers exactly. The more diverse NY-02 and NY-04 saw larger improvements.
As with the last few waves, our commitment to accuracy compels us to issue a few more minor adjustments as we’ve refined our databases and/or gotten newer numbers. And, for one last time, thanks to jeffmd, Democratic Luntz, californianintexas, Benawu, Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson, and all the other SSP contributors who helped out anonymously… you all put the “crowd” in crowdsourcing.
| District | Obama # | McCain # | Other # | Updated % | What we’d said |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AL-03 | 119,489 | 156,075 | 2,086 | 43.0/56.2 | 42.9/56.4 |
| HI-01 | 152,990 | 61,116 | 3,103 | 70.4/28.1 | 70.1/28.1 |
| HI-02 | 172,881 | 59,450 | 4,028 | 73.1/25.2 | 72.8/25.0 |
| MS-01 | 134,066 | 217,671 | 3,475 | 37.7/61.3 | 37.8/62.2 |
| MS-02 | 196,582 | 100,211 | 1,708 | 65.9/33.6 | 66.4/33.6 |
| MS-03 | 130,793 | 209,255 | 2,571 | 38.2/61.1 | 37.8/62.2 |
| MS-04 | 93,221 | 197,460 | 2,852 | 31.8/67.3 | 32.0/68.0 |
| TN-01 | 75,255 | 182,499 | 3,836 | 28.8/69.8 | 28.8/69.8 |
| TN-02 | 104,166 | 195,146 | 4,586 | 34.3/64.2 | 34.3/64.2 |
| TN-03 | 103,878 | 174,372 | 3,603 | 36.9/61.9 | 36.9/61.9 |
| TN-04 | 92,964 | 173,892 | 4,581 | 34.3/64.1 | 34.2/64.0 |
| TN-05 | 166,231 | 127,795 | 3,620 | 55.9/42.9 | 55.7/43.1 |
| TN-06 | 112,575 | 190,364 | 4,739 | 36.6/61.9 | 36.6/61.9 |
| TN-07 | 121,272 | 229,068 | 3,374 | 34.3/64.8 | 34.4/64.6 |
| TN-08 | 112,943 | 148,050 | 3,338 | 42.7/56.0 | 42.7/56.1 |
| TN-09 | 198,153 | 57,993 | 1,456 | 76.9/22.5 | 77.4/22.1 |
Extremely impressive job to compile and publish these numbers. You and all who worked on this deserve great praise and recognition for your efforts.
In Nassau County, our gains were mainly in minority areas (Hempstead, Uniondale, Freeport) which are all in NY-04. However I am actually pleasantly surprise to see the numbers steady in NY-03 and NY-05…in both cases, I thought we’d lose ground there.
We actually did marginally better in Nassau County than in 2004…Obama won 54%-45%, which is about where I’d expect the county to be. Hillary Clinton probably could’ve pushed 60%, there was a big PUMA effect on Long Island, but in reality, the PUMAs just didn’t show up. I know of at least five people in Nassau County who supported Clinton and didn’t vote in November…but these were all people who voted Bush in 2004 and are more conservative than most Democrats.
I can’t claim to have contributed much towards this effort and certainly haven’t done anything in months, but my warm congratulations go out to those who did the hard slog, and I’m proud to have been a (small) part of this.
I was surprised that the LI margins weren’t larger, but one plus with these numbers is that come re-districting time we have quite a bit too play with in regards to NY-3 without really having and impact on the other LI districts. The Nassau portion of NY-2 (middle to upper middle class areas in east-central Nassau) should be moved into NY-3 in return for some GOP areas in the Suffolk portion of NY-3. Also with Obama’s large margin in NY-4 you can flip some areas between the 3rd & 4th (Freeport for Levittown swap) or something along those lines. With the 3rd likely needing to expand in population it would need to stretch out a bit anyway.
This turns the 3rd more Democratic, makes the 2nd & 4th a bit less so, but still leaves both with a solid Dem advantage even if Israel or McCarthy seek another office or retire.
Brilliant work.
JK. Great work. Insomnia here I come!
Glad I was able to help SSP be the first to display congressional district results for all districts.
I have begun work on a map. The first one will be very basic (just blue for Obama and red for McCain), but I can go from there.
It looks like in a lot of the Congressional districts in NYC, Long Island, and northern NJ, no Democratic presidential candidate has been able to improve over Al Gore’s performance in 2000. This is especially apparent in Staten Island, Long Island, parts of Brooklyn and Queens, and Monmouth and Ocean Counties in NJ. Maybe Al Gore’s message played better than Obama’s. It’s something worth considering, if we want to be able to win NY-03 after Peter King vacates, or win NJ-05 ever.
HI-01 – D+17.4%
HI-02 – D+17.1%
IN-04 – D+13%
IN-07 – D+12.9%
IN-05 – D+12.2%
NE-02 – D+12%
IN-03 – D+11.8%
IL-08 – D+11.7%
IN-02 – D+11.1%
CA-47 – D+11.1%
Darn, now I feel bad about not having helped out with this.
Still, y’all are awesome!
You all go and amaze me again! Congrats to all involved.
First, thanks for the great resource!
Second, what really caught my eye was Obama’s strong performances in multiple Republican-held districts in CA. I understand now why a lot of folks out there thought we underperformed in the House races. Several went from Bush double digit wins to Obama wins – very impressive. Now we need to get those voters to go Democratic down the ballot.
I see he won 54-46 his first time.
Can you talk about how you handled redistricting?
It’s especially noticeable with districts that were created after 2000 but everything under goes changes. And even with states that didn’t gain/lose states, the 2000 redistricting would make comparisons difficult.
To map results, you usually have to do a lot of intense GIS stuff, layering old precincts onto the new ones (which can change yearly) … and if there’s anything more difficult to find than precinct maps, it’s old precinct maps. That’s how the NCEC folks do it and I know it’s a huge pain in the butt to do every 2-4 years since precinct boundaries are subject to the whims of thousands of individual county auditors.
2008 to 2004 comparisons can probably be safely be made, but without some explanation about how the 2000 results were determined, I’m not sure it’s valid data.
Thanks for doing that! Im checking it out now. Id love to see 08 Pres. results for other states’ legislative districts. Though ive seen some for NY State Assembly.