As a political science geek who likes to look at the election numbers, demographics and trends, I believe the 2018 election was historic one for the City of Dunwoody as it identified a change of the electorate inside our boundaries whereby those who voted Democratic outnumbered those who voted Republican in most races. With younger families moving into the area slowly replacing the original owners who bought in Dunwoody when this was considered the far out suburbs, along with the candidacy of Stacey Abrams energizing the Democratic base which drove record turnouts, a shift has occurred. Though Stacey Abrams may not have won the Governorship, this democratic push carried many of those down the ballot to victory thereby changing the party affiliation in the State Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives from a Republicans representing Dunwoody to now Democratic representation.
I obtained my data from the DeKalb County Board of Elections excluding third party candidates and provisional ballots still in dispute, used the City of Dunwoody GIS system for the precinct maps, cross referencing it against the DeKalb Polling Places and input it into Excel for trend analysis. At any point I may have completely screwed up the data but I believe it to be correct.
If there are flaws discovered please let me know in the comments but do me a favor, be kind as I do this stuff late at night after most people are long asleep. Another favor, I welcome your analysis of the data and election but let's please keep all comments kind as we all are neighbors and all want what is best for our Country, State and community in general. Thanks John Heneghan
If you early voted, does your vote get attributed to the Dunwoody library district? If so, that skews the results as many people early voted.
ReplyDeletePattie, I probably should have also linked this 600 page report which shows the advance votes at the library being attributed to your specific precinct.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dekalbcountyga.gov/sites/default/files/user701/GEMS%20SOVC%20REPORT%2011.6.18.pdf
Thanks, John.
ReplyDeleteJohn--I am a numbers nerd, so this is great stuff for people like me.
ReplyDeleteI find the vote totals in each of the races really interesting to compare. I don't know what the analysis would be--I am not a political scientist--but I would assume (and this could absolutely be an erroneous assumption) that the governor's race would collect the majority of the votes as many do not vote down ballot. This was not the case in these races in the City of Dunwoody. I would imagine we are collectively very in-tune to local politics; I wonder if other down-ballot races were similarly impacted.
Thank you for taking the time to post this information.