Motley Moose – Archive

This is a part of a series of posts analyzing the 2010 midterm elections. This post will analyze the Ohio gubernatorial election, in which Republican John Kasich narrowly defeated Democrat Ted Strickland.

Ohio’s Gubernatorial Election

In most of the 2010 midterm elections, Democratic performances were strikingly similar to President Barack Obama’s performance in 2008. If a place had generally voted Democratic in the past, but didn’t vote for Mr. Obama – it tended not to vote Democratic in 2010 either. An example of this is southwest Pennsylvania. The same holds true for places that generally voted Republican in the past but went for Mr. Obama this time (e.g. the Houston and Salt Lake City metropolitan areas.)

Ohio’s gubernatorial election was an exception to this trend. Democratic former Governor Ted Strickland built a very traditional Democratic coalition in Ohio:

More below.

This is the part of a series of posts examining how to create super-packed districts of one race. The other posts in this series pack Asians, blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

The Districts

The previous post stated that

I drew a lot of districts in the quest for the whitest district of them all. It wouldn’t do the difficulty of this task justice to just show one district. Rather, I will show the five whitest districts of all the ones that I drew. Numbers five and four will be in this post. The top three will be in the next one.

The fifth-whitest district was in the state of Indiana, the fourth whitest was in the state of Kentucky.

Now for the third-whitest district.

#3: West Virginia

Population – 98.2% white, 0.3% black, 0.5% Hispanic, 0.2% Asian, 0.2% Native American, 0.7% other

More below.

There’s nothing like a long road trip for allowing time to think. Many, if not most, of the thoughts are silly or nonsensical. However, some seem worth sharing.

Pre-trip thought: God, I love Google Maps.

9:30 pm – 1 am CST

The trip from Memphis, Tennessee to Genesee county Michigan is 800 miles. The first portion runs east on I-40 from Memphis to Nashville. This leg of the trip is a little over 200 miles. It seems longer. I came to the conclusion that it feels longer, because it is running east instead of north. It doesn’t feel like the trip back to Michigan begins until you get to Nashville. No wonder it seems so long.

Another thought that came to me through this stretch is that Tennessee is a beautiful state with more than its share of bigots and small-minded people. The Tennessee Republican Party gives the Texas Republican Party a close race for the most offensive state political party in the country.

Good Christ Almighty, here we go again. Hot off the wire from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

About one-third of the absentee ballot applications received at the Hamilton County Board of Elections have been ruled invalid because Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign printed a version of the form with an extra, unneeded box on it.

It gets even better folks!