Trouble Out in Nevada

Today's update is on a different note than some of the ones that have come before it. As this project has been progressed, I've been incredibly fortunate to have wonderful data made available by state's elections divisions - data down to every individual precinct, so I can truly plot out every district individually.

Unfortunately, I'm running out of state where that kind of data is readily available. Today's post will serve as an example of that problem - the state of Nevada only releases election results down to county level. In some states, you can get away with that, but not in Nevada, where nearly 75% of the state population is split between two counties.

So, before I get to the districts themselves, I want to put out a few instructions on how to read this data. The statewide average is accurate, and wouldn't change with more detailed information - at 51-49, Nevada is the closest state we have looked at thus far. At the presidential level, the state has been trending Democratic, but Democrats have struggled in state, losing the past two gubernatorial contests by significant margins. The one bright spot has been the legislature, where a Democratic majority is preventing Republican governor Brian Sandoval from implementing the same sort of destructive policies that have been emblematic of east-coast Republican governors.



So, the baseline data about the state as a whole is strong. The Democratic end of the spectrum has been compressed however, as the county level data keeps me from extracting out the districts that are significantly more or less democratic than the county as a whole. The Republican end is less distorted, as the rural districts have been kept largely in tact.

This data is precisely why this project relies on your help. Without more detailed data, we can't do the kind of analysis we love to provide, and the whole community suffers. If you have good data for how these districts overlap with the senate seats OR precinct by precinct data for ANY statewide race in the state, please e-mail me at mbreuer.vt@gmail.com. Furthemore, if you have that kind of data for ANY state, please feel free to reach out to me as well - while there are a few states remaining that I am set with, plenty more need an awful lot of help. And finally, as the 2011 year winds down, I would love any detailed redistricting data that is available, so I can start prepping these indexes for the upcoming elections.