Assessing the Election

by: Begoner

Thu Nov 08, 2007 at 05:54:47 PM EST

One interesting point is the change in voting pattern in Republican-leaning districts.  In 2003, there were 13 districts in which Democrats won between 30% and 40% of the vote.  In 2007, there were only 6.  Most of this change is accounted for by a slight shift towards the Democrats, although one district veered the other way; there, Democrats picked up less that 30% of the vote.  The same trend holds true throughout the state; it is not a shift towards a more "moderate" stance, with districts moving away from the extremes and towards the middle, but rather a shift away from the Republican Party.  The graph below shows the average movement towards the Democratic Party, with the green line representing the average shift (unweighted for total votes).

Of the 40 legislative districts, 26 became bluer, 11 became redder, and there was insufficient information for 3 of the races (because the Democratic candidates ran unopposed).  However, of those districts that shifted towards the Republicans, 4 did so by less than half of a percentage point while an additional 4 did so by less than two percentage points.  The remaining 3 are the 12th, 13th, and 24th districts, in which a major change was observed.  Of these, the 12th is the most critical, as we had an incredibly narrow loss there this cycle; the 13th is slightly less competitive, but still somewhat amenable to Democrats (it voted 42.88% Democratic this year).  The 24th, on the other hand, is pretty much a lost cause: it only voted 28.46% Democratic.

On the blue-shift side, the changes are much more pronounced.  Of the 26 districts that became bluer, not a single one did so by under 0.5 percentage points.  The biggest gains were seen in the 3rd, 8th, 16th, and 29th district; in fact, Democrats were able to win an astounding 92.30% of the vote in the 29th.

Another important thing to note is the geographic distribution of these increases.  Taking South Jersey to be composed of the first nine legislative districts, there was a significant shift towards Democrats.  8 of those 9 districts became bluer; overall, the region shifted towards the Democrats by 4.18 percentage points.  This is over double the shift seen in the rest of New Jersey (1.68%).  It appears that the gains in the state senate are emblematic of a more general regional shift towards the Democrats.  Also, most of the state-wide change was in strengthening the Democrats' grip on districts they controlled.  The legislative districts in which Democrats won this cycle enjoyed an shift of 2.62% towards the Democrats; Republican-held districts, on the other hand, only saw a 1.75% shift towards the Democrats.

Here's a map illustrating the degree of the change; it is mostly concentrated in the south and the east.

These are not lackluster results as they would superficially appear; although not earth-shattering, they do suggest a strong continuation of the trend towards the Democratic Party, despite the state's current fiscal woes and Republican attempts to demonize Democrats on that basis.