Trump – retain voters

When I first started to look at this data, I made a little comment that there are quite a few Trump supporters who also voted to keep the repeal of the death penalty. I initially thought that there were quite a few Catholic Trump supporters who thought that they could follow the Church’s teachings by voting for Trump and then voting to keep the repeal of the death penalty. This would require actual investigation by someone who gets paid to do this to determine why these voters could vote for Trump who was an avowed supporter of the death penalty but also could vote to keep the repeal of the death penalty. Overall, in Douglas County, keeping the repeal of the death penalty outperformed Trump by 1 point.

So what I wanted to do was look at the precincts that Trump was able to win and then look at the precincts where “retain” outperformed Trump. There were 9 such precincts in Douglas County.  I’m ignoring one of them because there simply was not very many voters in the precinct.  That precinct is 08-27 which is located from 144^th-156^th Center-Pacific. There were 107 votes for one of the four Presidential candidates and only 102 votes for Referendum 426.

06-26: This precinct is located from 114^th-132^nd and Harney-Dodge.  It is actually located next to 08-27 which is interesting for what we’re going to talk about in a little bit. This is labeled in my spreadsheet as the Jewish Community Center area. Beth Israel Synagogue is located just south of this precinct, closer to Pierce St. The Jewish Community Center is located just west of this precinct. I bring this up because as I began to look at the precincts who voted for Trump and wanted to retain the death penalty repeal, they were focused in this area. The areas that were around this area were 08-27; 06-04; 06-28; 06-10; 06-26; 06-03; and 06-09.  The next table is how the precincts voted for Trump and then for retain on Referendum 426 and then if retain was able to overperform and by how much (essentially retain minus Trump).

It’s not perfect if you just have those precincts but it’s rather interesting that these precincts were able to stomach voting for Trump and for retaining the repeal of the death penalty. If we were able to segment these areas from the precincts down to the street level analysis. I would be willing to bet that the areas that were closer to be able to walk to Beth Israel Synagogue would be more likely to vote to retain on Referendum 426.

06-06: This precinct is located a little to the South and a little to the East of the precincts (at least the Western portion of this precinct). There’s not a good explanation of this precinct. It is located from 72^nd-78^th St and I-80 – Oak St. I have it listed as Midtown but not exactly what I would describe it as that. Trump won the precinct by 5 votes over Hillary Clinton.  He happens to be the most popular of the candidates listed on the ballot. Don Bacon lost this precinct to Brad Ashford. It seems to indicate that in this area there were a number of people who could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton but were leaning Democratic. There were 20 more votes for the three Congressional candidates than for the four party Presidential candidates.  Ashford got 55 more votes than Clinton did in the precinct and won it outright. But even still, retain did not win in the precinct. It got 49.1% of the vote.  It lost by 16 votes. This is a precinct where I would want to talk to the voters. They did not vote on ideological lines.

06-08: This precinct could have easily been listed in the table above. It is located from 108^th-114^th St Center-Pacific. So it is just outside of the tabled precincts I looked at. It just strengthens my idea that the voters who voted for Trump and then voted to keep the repeal of the death penalty were clustered.  Trump won this precinct by 4 points or 50 votes out of 1,330 cast. Bacon got 682 votes in the precinct as there were 31 more votes cast in the precinct for Congressional candidates compared to the four party Presidential vote. Even with all of that, there were a number of voters who crossed party lines to keep the repeal of the death penalty.

06-02: This is yet another one of the areas that could have easily been considered in that table I have of the Jewish Community Center area. It is located from 96^th St – 108^th St Pacific – Dodge St. Unlike a couple of the precincts that we have been looking at, it wasn’t particularly close. Trump got nearly 54% of the vote compared to Hillary’s 42.5%. Bacon won by 3 points, as well. And retain was not very close either. There were 55% of voters in this precinct who voted to keep the repeal of the death penalty compared to only 45% who wanted to reinstate the death penalty.

05-23: I could even consider this precinct as part of the same are. It’s a very narrow precinct located from 104^th -108^th St F St – Pacific St. This was a very close precinct in the Presidential vote where Trump defeated Clinton by a mere 8 votes out of 1,165 votes cast. This is another one of the precincts where we have Democrats who were unwilling to vote for Clinton. Brad Ashford got 50.6% of the Congressional three party votes. But then they crossed the line again to vote to reinstate the death penalty. Although, 48.5% of voters wanted to keep the repeal of the death penalty.

So why are all these voters who supported Trump but also wanted to keep the repeal of the death penalty? There are a couple of different possible explanations. My favorite one based on the table above is heavily influenced by religion. Judaism, at least some denominations, oppose the death penalty. Shabbot observant Jews need to live within walking distance of their synagogues to be able to attend services and be able to walk home.

The other explanation is one that we should consider, as well. Voting is inherently a social phenomenon. We kind of ignore this, to some extent. If your family or your friends support a particular cause or candidate and are passionate about it, they will talk to you about it. If you end your friendship with them or sever ties with your family over it, you are the ones that are considered a jerk. If you start arguments at get togethers, people will not invite you back. Overall, it is polite to just allow for the ones who are passionate to express their beliefs. These beliefs extend to a certain point where they are saturated by an area. Friendships, by and large, are not chosen because of ideas or shared interests, they are largely formed and cultivated because of proximity. What good is it if you are a Democrat living in a fairly conservative area to express support for a Democratic candidate that you don’t feel passionate about? You may lose friends, lose invitations to neighborhood get togethers, or family get togethers. It is easier to just accept it. And to a certain point, you may bring that baggage in with you when you vote. You may not feel comfortable, necessarily, voting for Trump but you may just choose not to vote for Clinton. If that same area is heavily invested in the idea of keeping the repeal of the death penalty, you may accept it, too.

But it’s definitely worth exploring this area to see if it can be flipped. It’s certainly interesting.