{"id":9789,"date":"2018-03-07T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9789"},"modified":"2018-03-06T17:10:49","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T22:10:49","slug":"where-are-the-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9789","title":{"rendered":"Where Are the Voters?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

With six Democratic candidates for County Executive and over thirty Democrats running for Council At-Large<\/a>, the hunt is on for MoCo primary voters.\u00a0 Luckily for the candidates, we are here to point the way!<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start by looking at population.\u00a0 Residents are not distributed evenly across the county.\u00a0 The neighborhoods closest to the D.C. border and close to urban centers are more dense than Upcounty areas.\u00a0 Below we show population estimates by local area for the years 2012-2016 from the U.S. Census Bureau.\u00a0 Local areas are grouped by zip codes.\u00a0 For example, data for Rockville does not refer to the municipality itself, but to the four zip codes that comprise Rockville (20850, 20851, 20852 and 20853).\u00a0 Because Silver Spring is such a large part of the county, we broke it into four pieces: Downtown (zip codes 20901 and 20910), Wheaton (20902), Glenmont\/Norbeck (20906) and Silver Spring East County (20903, 20904 and 20905).<\/p>\n

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And so the population concentrations are where one might expect: Downcounty and near urban centers like Rockville and Gaithersburg.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the end of the story.\u00a0 Our elections are decided by closed Democratic primaries.\u00a0 For state legislative and county offices, the general elections have not been relevant since 2006, when the last two Republican elected officials (County Council Member Howie Denis and Delegate Jean Cryor) were defeated.\u00a0 And Democrats are distributed differently around the county than all residents.<\/p>\n

Right after the last cycle ended, we obtained a January 2015 version of the voter file from the county\u2019s Board of Elections and spliced it with Census data to model local elections.\u00a0 The number of registered Democrats in MoCo has risen<\/a> by 5%<\/a> in the last three years so, for the purpose of looking at geographic patterns, our existing voter model is not exact but is not too far off.\u00a0 Below is a comparison of population by local area from 2012-2016 and the number of registered Democrats from January 2015.<\/p>\n

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There are large differences in Democratic density (the percentage of residents who are registered Democrats) between MoCo\u2019s local areas.\u00a0 In five local areas \u2013 Cabin John, Chevy Chase, Kensington, Bethesda and Silver Spring Downtown \u2013 more than 40% of residents are registered Democrats.\u00a0 And in seven local areas \u2013 Dickerson, Poolesville, Damascus, Germantown, Gaithersburg, Boyds and Clarksburg \u2013 less than 30% of residents are registered Democrats.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s fine-tune this even further.\u00a0 The chart below compares population by local area from 2012-2016 to the number of Super Democrats, whom we define as having voted in all three of the 2006, 2010 and 2014 primaries, in January 2015.\u00a0 This Super Dem number has probably fallen slightly as a few folks who voted in those primaries have left the county or passed away, but the broad pattern will still hold.<\/p>\n

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Again, there are large differences in Super Democrat density (the percentage of residents who are Super Dems) between local areas.\u00a0 In six areas – Cabin John, Chevy Chase, Kensington, Bethesda, Silver Spring Downtown and Takoma Park \u2013 at least 5% of residents are Super Dems.\u00a0 In seven areas \u2013 Poolesville, Montgomery Village, Gaithersburg, Damascus, Germantown, Boyds and Clarksburg \u2013 less than 3% of residents are Super Dems.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the bottom line \u2013 countywide elections are decided in large part by voters in a Democratic Crescent stretching from Takoma Park in the east through Downtown Silver Spring, Kensington and Chevy Chase to Bethesda and Cabin John in the west.\u00a0 These areas roughly trace the neighborhoods around the Beltway and between the Beltway and D.C.\u00a0 They are the parts of the county that sent Jamie Raskin to Congress<\/a>.\u00a0 Together, the six areas in the Democratic Crescent have 23% of the county\u2019s population, 29% of the registered Democrats and 37% of the Super Dems.\u00a0 Every countywide candidate is going to want to play there.<\/p>\n

Does that mean that a candidate whose chief appeal is outside the Democratic Crescent is doomed to fail?\u00a0 Not necessarily.\u00a0 Crescent voters have MANY suitors as most of the Executive and Council At-Large candidates come from those areas and will be aggressively pursuing votes there.\u00a0 Council Member Nancy Floreen, who is a former Mayor and current resident of Garrett Park, won four straight at-large elections by combining women, moderates and Upcounty voters<\/a> and her 2014 second-place finish was her best ever.\u00a0 This model is no doubt being studied by County Executive candidate and former Mayor of Rockville Rose Krasnow and Council At-Large candidate and Germantown resident Marilyn Balcombe, both of whom Floreen has endorsed.<\/p>\n

One more thing.\u00a0 Some Upcounty activists have long complained of the influence of Downcounty on county government decision making.\u00a0 Your author did not witness geographic parochialism on the part of any At-Large Council Members, all of whom come from Downcounty, during the time I was employed at the council.\u00a0 But to the extent that Downcounty does exercise disproportionate influence, it\u2019s because those residents turn out in Democratic primaries to a much greater extent than people who live Upcounty.\u00a0 As long as primaries remain closed to party members, that will continue to be the case in any countywide elections regardless of structural changes in county government.\u00a0 If you are an Upcounty resident and you don\u2019t like that, the best remedy is to get your neighbors to vote in the primary.<\/p>\n

Downcounty\u2019s influence is only likely to grow because of one new factor in county politics: the implementation of public financing.\u00a0 As we shall see, a large percentage of contributions to publicly financed candidates is coming from localities in the Democratic Crescent we described above.\u00a0 That information will be published in the near future.\u00a0 Stay tuned to Seventh State!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. With six Democratic candidates for County Executive and over thirty Democrats running for Council At-Large, the hunt is on for MoCo primary voters.\u00a0 Luckily for the candidates, we are here to point the way! Let\u2019s start by looking at population.\u00a0 Residents are not distributed evenly across the county.\u00a0 The neighborhoods closest to … Continue reading Where Are the Voters?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,209,492,790],"tags":[1545,1933,1627,1662],"class_list":["post-9789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-council-at-large","category-county-executive","category-democrats","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-council-at-large","tag-county-executive","tag-democrats"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2xT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9789"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9797,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9789\/revisions\/9797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}