Mapmaker, Mapmaker, Make Me a Map

by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math

Ken Strasma of Strategic Telemetry posted a town-by-town map of the Lieberman-Lamont race, but it's not fine-grained enough for my tastes. Plus, it sets the midpoint of the color coding at 50% to show Lamont's overall support, rather than 51.7% to show support relative to his final total, the way I like to look at races. Update: go here for a full-sized picture.

In both cases, we can spot some regional trends. Lamont fared best in the small towns of Torrand and Middlesex counties in the Eastern half of the state, and the far Northwest corner of the state in Litchfield county. Both areas represent small towns that are outside the orbit of the major urban areas like Hartford, New Haven, the Greater New York City region, and Groton-New London. He managed a draw (or slight win) in the populous area of Fairfield county, as well as around Hartford. But his biggest loss was in the New Haven area, particularly in its working class suburbs.

That's not to say that Lamont's support depended wholly on pissed-off yuppies; the townships in the Northwest that rejected Lieberman most forcefully are solidly middle class. But urban and suburban voters are more likely to be "low-information" voters who pay only a tangential attention to politics, while small town voters tend to watch the news more often. Plus, Sikorsky Aircraft and the US Navy don't provide many jobs in Lamont's towns.