Elections

We know that both Moses Carey and Valerie Foushee won the Commissioners race, but how did Valerie come out on top? Let's take a look at what really went down in the Orange County Commissioners race.

To draw out some conclusions about the County Commissioners race, I split up the precincts into five (value neutral) groups based on the results in this race. At the bottom of this post you will find those groupings (inadequately) defined.

DISCLAIMER: There is no significance to the order in which the Groups were lettered. There is nothing implicitly better about Group A versus Group D, for example. They are just identifying terms. Also, I hope I am merely presenting what I found, rather than what I wish that I found, so please do not read this post as reflecting what I think about merger etc. For the record, I voted for Val and Moses, just like almost all voters in my precinct.

Looking at those Groups, here is what I conclude (initially):

Not suprisingly, every Democrat up for election in Orange County won handily. Here are results from the News & Observer (with my addition of party affiliation):

County Commissioner (2 Seats Available)
Valerie Foushee [D] 18,516
Moses Carey [D] 16,652
Jamie Daniel [R] 12,021
Artie L. Franklin[L] 3,446
43 of 44 precincts reporting

NC State Senate District 23
Ellie Kinnaird [D] 18,869
Whit Whitfield [R] 10,727
43 of 44 precincts reporting

Soil And Water District Supervisor
Roger Tate [D] 13,848
Will Shooter [L] 5,742
Write- in 144
43 of 44 precincts reporting

US Congress District 4
David Price [D] 20,582
Todd Batchelor [R] 9,355
43 of 44 precincts reporting

Anyone care to analyze or interpret these results?

Guest Post by George Entenman

I've been grabbing the raw Absentee and One Stop voting data every day for the last week or so (I am doing it for the Orange County Democratic Party). Here are my final counts from the raw data downloaded from the SBOE site this morning at 6:09 am Sunday.

Here's the Orange County early voting data through Saturday, the last day of early voting (there may be more absentee ballots received):

        Absentee:
DEM : 1573 (51.79%)
UNA : 842 (27.72%)
REP : 610 (20.09%)
LIB : 12 (0.40%)
Total absentee votes: 3037
One Stop (Early) Voting, By Party
DEM : 18440 (60.96%)
UNA : 6331 (20.93%)
REP : 5371 (17.76%)
LIB : 106 (0.35%)
Total early votes: 30248

Notice some interesting things about Orange County:

1. More Democratic and Unaffiliated voters voted absentee than did Republicans.

2. More Democratic and Unaffiliated voters voted early than did Republicans.

3. In both cases the more traditional Rep - Dem - Una order prevailed in statewide early voting - see below.