The steady climb of Democrats in Anderson County - numbers don't lie

Primary vote analysis comparing 2016 to 2020; analysis by author

I wonder if the Republican leadership in Anderson County can feel the earth move underneath them. Certainties are not as certain as they thought - political assumptions are not so sure anymore - the political world is shifting and I really do wonder if they know this is happening. But it is. For instance…the table above.

I wanted to see if the share of Democratic votes in the primaries increased in 2020 compared to 2016. But, in 2020, Republicans had little incentive to come out and vote since Trump is the inevitable nominee for the GOP. So many might have stayed home. However, in 2016, Republicans and Democrats had a very strong reason to vote in the Presidential primary since it was a totally open race. So the electorate in 2016 is an excellent point of reference to make that comparison between 2016 and 2020. The first column is the precinct abbreviations (e.g., AND = Andersonville, etc.) while the second column is the total number of votes in each precinct.

Then to compare Democratic vote shares from 2016 to 2020, I took each precinct’s total Democratic votes and determined what percentage they were in the total votes cast. For instance, Emory Valley (EVL) had 1108 total votes in 2016 with 35% of them going to Democrats. But in 2020, using the total votes from 2016 (again- to replicate a contested primary), the Democratic percentage moves up to 61% of the total vote. This means we increased our share by 26% in that precinct (last column).

The numbers on the bottom in bold, from left to right, are the total number of votes, the average percentage of Democratic votes in 2016, the average percentage of Democratic votes in 2020, and the average point increase from 2016 to 2020.

This is a remarkable table. It shows we increased significantly in several precincts as well as increased in virtually all of them. In fact, this seemed so good that I wanted to make sure most of the voters were Democrats! So I asked the Anderson County Election Commission to provide me with a by name voter roster of those Democrats who early voted. I then went name by name for about 350 of them to look at their age and partisanship score (found in our Votebuilder which assigns a score based on voting patterns, donations, and the like). When someone had a Republican score, I then looked on social media to see if I could find anything to help determine their true partisanship.

Based on the above work, I would say the “cross-over” vote of Republicans voting in our primary was 10-12%. But, a number of those cross-overs were Republicans who do not support Trump. A larger number were obviously true Republicans who were trying to influence our primary. The overall number seems to be very small and did not influence the outcome. Finally, I think any misidentification of a vote by Votebuilder (either Republican or Democrat) cancel each other out. The numbers are true.

All of that to say- I believe this analysis is a valid expression of ground truth in Anderson County. We are growing. Significantly.

We have much to do. We need to knock on doors, make phone calls, send out hand-written mailers, and all those activities to both galvanize our base to vote and persuade the swing voters to our cause. We can do this. The numbers show that we can. We need your help to do this…come join us!

A list of abbreviations and their corresponding precincts:

And = Andersonville…. Bri = Briceville,…Brn = Bull Run…Ccc = Clinton Courthouse,…Chs = Clinton High School… Clx = Claxton… Cms = Clinton Middle School…Dvl = Dutch Valley…Evl = Emory Valley…Fvw = Fairview…Gla = Glen Alpine…Glw = Glenwood…Hcr = Hendrix Creek…Hvw = Highland View…Lms = Lake City Middle School… Mrl = Marlow…Ncl = North Clinton…Nor = Norris…Nrw = Norwood…Och = Oak Ridge City Hall… Pvl = Pine Valley…Rob = Robertsville…Ros= Rosedale…Rtc = Rocky Top (was LLC)…Scl = South Clinton…Wdl = Woodline… Whl = West Hills