By basically beating the Grand Old Party in every precinct in the county. Basically.
Republicans tend to lose in this county. Up until now we had a all-Democratic commission and every other elected official was Democratic, save an Independent sheriff. I assumed going into this race that Blake would do better than Republicans in general, and it turns out he did well enough to win.
Here’s the data I’ve been playing with. I took the three Republican results from 2012 (Senate, governor and President) and averaged them. Then I compared Bud Blake’s performance.
Here’s a chart to illustrate my point:
The deeper the red dot, the more votes Blake got against the Republican average.
Basically, again, Blake did better than the average Republican candidate in Thurston County literally everywhere. But, if you were to pick out hot spots, it would be in the outer reaches of Lacey, out towards Fort Lewis. This would fit the story line that Blake is a veteran. While somewhat new to Thurston County, this is something understood my military families who live close to Fort Lewis.
He didn’t do as well as I would have thought in the northern Hawks Prairie area (assuming military and retired people) but did much better around older southern Hawks Prairie and deeper Lacey. He also did well against the average Republican vote in west and eastern Olympia. Not many actual votes there, but still picking up against the conservative average.
Wow, this is a great post. Led me to check out some of your other posts, you've written some good stuff here.
Can I ask what tool/program you used to make that chart on google maps? I am trying to do something similar for elections results but it is not working. Please share!
Thanks man!
The tools I used were pretty simple, just the Google maps maker and Google sheets. The trick was finding geocoded precincts. Somewhere on the internet I found some lat/long data for individual precincts and then created a cheat sheet for myself for Thurston County.
I'll try to find where exactly I found that information and repost it if I can.
Appreciate the response! I just made myself a similar map based off of yours in different counties.
I'd love to know how you got the lat/long data for the precincts. Post a link if you find it. I'd imagine Thurston county would have that info for their precincts, but would other counties? I wound up just taking an address at random from voters who lived in the precinct and using that to mark the map. (Took me alot longer I'll tell you.) Close enough I figure.
So- just wondering, how does he against Democrats?