The Secretary of State’s web site provides a great deal of functionality when it comes to looking at election results. One of the features of the site is a set of interactive maps of the results by county for each race.
We have grabbed a few of the maps that we thought were particularly interesting. Have a look, and share your thoughts in the comments below.
Governor nomination – Republican
Incumbent governor Matt Bevin was expected to win this election. The big question was by how much, and perhaps where. Bevin barely got past 50% in the vote totals. What’s interesting is the map showing which counties he won, and which counties were won by his major opponent, Robert Goforth.
As you can see, Goforth took most of the counties in eastern and south-central Kentucky. And, in the counties in those areas that he didn’t win, the margins were close. It doesn’t appear that the Gov is particularly popular in that part of the state.
Governor nomination – Democrat
This was a three-way race, with Andy Beshear the presumed leader for most of the race. However, Rocky Adkins seemed to be closing during the final weeks, and came very close to upsetting Beshear. The wild card, of course, was Adam Edelen’s campaign. Would the ads it ran make a positive difference, a negative difference, or no difference at all?
Once again, there was a definite geographical and urban-rural split, with Adkins picking up pretty much the entire eastern part of the state, as well as various counties in south-central and west Kentucky. But, he could not overcome the Beshear advantage in the urban areas.
Beshear won the overall race by about 24,000 votes. He won Louisville, Lexington, and the three northern Kentucky counties by about 46,000 votes. That was the ballgame.
The other interesting/wierd thing on the map is that Adam Edelen won two counties: Meade and Breckinridge. Why those two? (And of course, it is because he was born there, as noted by Donna Mattingly in the comments. My drop.)
Auditor nomination – Democrat
The other race with an interesting map is the Democratic nomination for Auditor. The winner was Sheri Donahue, but Kelsey Hayes Coots and Chris Tobe also ran strong races.
Coots strung together county wins in southeast Kentucky and a swath of western Kentucky, which Donahue won pretty much all the urban areas and the central and northern parts of the state. Tobe did not win any counties, but pulled a significant number of votes.
Kelsey Coots is a young and energetic candidate, that we hope will run for office again. Perhaps she can look at these results and use them to tune her next campaign – as, indeed, every candidate should do, both winners and losers.
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