Swing Between the 1796 and 1800 Presidential Elections in Maryland

Welcome back to the blog, apologies for the unannounced hiatus.  Today I'm sharing Election Cartography Corner's third swing map, by Twitter user @ElpisActual.  She takes us way back to the early days of the United States republic by mapping the swing in the presidential vote in Maryland from the 1796 presidential election to the 1800 presidential election.

Thanks to President George Washington declining to run after his second term, 1796 was the first time the USA had a contested presidential election, with multiple candidates and parties actually trying to win.  Washington was officially non-partisan, but leaned Federalist, so President John Adams who succeeded him in 1797 continued that party's control of the executive.  Therefore, when President Thomas Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, it was the first time in American history that there was a peaceful transfer of power between two parties.

 

 

The map shows dramatic swings, which makes sense given the primordial nature of partisanship at the time, as well as the much smaller voting population.  Maryland as a whole did flip from Federalist in 1796 to Democratic-Republican in 1800.
 

The Progression of Tennessee House District 13

co-authored by Jack Vaughan

Let’s explore “the most interesting State House district in Tennessee,” as co-author Jack Vaughan put it. Tennessee House District 13 is one of the 26 out of 99 seats in the lower house of Tennessee’s legislature held by a Democrat and has consistently hosted the most competitive races in the state. This first set of maps shows the last five elections for this seat, and it has in fact gone back and forth:

As Vaughan says in his tweet sharing the map:

Rep. Gloria Johnson has been on the ballot all five times HD-13 has had its current boundaries, winning 3/5 times.

This Knoxville-based district has become more favorable to Democrats due to the city's shifts leftward. It's one of two House seats Democrats hold in Knox County. pic.twitter.com/GaQriDMNNK

— Jack Vaughan (@theJackVaughan) April 8, 2021

Knoxville, like many metro areas across the country, is trending Democratic. The part of the district north of the Tennessee River has managed to outweigh the more conservative, rural southern areas of Knox County added to the district by the Republican legislature in the 2010 redistricting cycle in an attempt to swing the historically working-class district to the right. The recent shift is most notable after the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, where the district went from being within a percentage point or two to being above a 5% margin for the Democrat.

State Representative Gloria Johnson has also proven herself to be a strong candidate in Knox County, such as in her 2012 win despite GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney carrying the district by 4.6%

The margin shifts visible in this second set of maps shows that even the Republican-leaning southern portions of Knox County included in HD 13 are moving a little to the left. The significant shifts, though, have occurred in the portions of west and north Knoxville that make up the northern half of HD 13, such as the margin shift of 37% towards Democrats in the West Knoxville neighborhood of Sequoyah Hills and the double-digit shifts in North Knoxville.

HD 13 is somewhat of a microcosm of Knox County: composed of an urban & suburban core with a sizable rural population. The district’s trends mirror those in the county, exceeding double-digit shifts in favor of Democrats the past decade.

Redistricting for 2022 is a complete unknown, however, and Rep. Johnson may face another unfavorable district. She succeeded in 2012, and she may well do it again.

Loudoun County, Virginia: 2012 to 2020

Loudoun County, Virginia encompasses the northernmost portion of the state, on the outskirts of the Washington, DC metro area.  This pair of maps from José Manrique (@JoseManrique93) shows President Joe Biden improving on President Barack Obama's re-election numbers by ten points, and President Donald Trump under-performing now-Senator Mitt Romney by even more than that.  They say:

The more suburban part of Loudoun County, VA (i.e. the precincts to the southeast) was already voting Democratic back in 2012, but the margins Biden got in that area were just overwhelming. Trump received less than 40% in almost every precinct of said area in 2020. pic.twitter.com/2ksZPypybS

— José Manrique (@JoseManrique93) May 17, 2021

This populous county swinging toward Democrats is one of a few reasons why Virginia is trending blue.  I personally find it interesting how Republican support has noticeably collapsed near the geographical center of the county.

Building Locations in the USA Compared to 2020 Presidential Margins

This beautiful set of maps from Twitter user @Akko2021 shows how population density correlates with political outcomes.  Here's what they had to say:

#ElectionTwitter The urban/rural divide is one of the prevalent divides in the United States. One way to measure it is by looking at a map of buildings. Comparing the over 130 million buildings to the 2020 results, the map not only looks beautiful but the similarities are clear. pic.twitter.com/2eN4gdvJN0

— Akko (@Akko2021) May 15, 2021

  And here are the maps (definitely click open the full-size versions, they're awesome!):