If you’ve been reading ForwardKY for a while, you know that I am a data person. (Stats nerd, data geed, whatever.) So obviously, I’m going to pull down the results by county and see what I can see.
The Beshear win was not just urban, or even suburban.
His win was spread across the state. Here are the counties where he beat Bevin straight up.
Jefferson – 67.0%
Fayette – 65.5%
Franklin – 61.5%
Elliott – 59.1%
Rowan – 58.5%
Wolfe – 54.5%
Magoffin – 53.6%
Woodford – 53.1%
Floyd – 52.6%
Marion – 52.1%
Bath – 52.0%
Campbell – 51.8%
Boyd – 51.8%
Hancock – 51.8%
Henderson – 51.3%
Warren – 50.8%
Carter – 50.4%
Breathitt – 50.2%
Kenton – 49.5%
Nicholas – 49.5%
Knott – 49.4%
Scott – 49.1%
Madison – 49.0%
However, the urban areas, and counties with larger populations, gave him a huge advantage.
Here are the counties with the 20 highest vote totals. Note the ginormous margin in Jefferson, and the equally large percentage win in Fayette. (And what happened in Pulaski and Laurel counties?)
|
County |
Bevin |
Beshear |
Hicks |
Total |
Dem% |
|
Jefferson |
87,738 |
186,510 |
4,170 |
278,418 |
67.0% |
|
Fayette |
36,915 |
73,397 |
1,719 |
112,031 |
65.5% |
|
Kenton |
24,936 |
25,479 |
1,082 |
51,497 |
49.5% |
|
Boone |
23,000 |
16,947 |
970 |
40,917 |
41.4% |
|
Warren |
17,118 |
18,249 |
558 |
35,925 |
50.8% |
|
Daviess |
17,238 |
16,013 |
805 |
34,056 |
47.0% |
|
Campbell |
14,587 |
16,352 |
638 |
31,577 |
51.8% |
|
Hardin |
16,018 |
14,524 |
710 |
31,252 |
46.5% |
|
Madison |
14,943 |
15,017 |
705 |
30,665 |
49.0% |
|
Bullitt |
14,517 |
11,275 |
700 |
26,492 |
42.6% |
|
Oldham |
13,488 |
12,115 |
551 |
26,154 |
46.3% |
|
McCracken |
13,252 |
9,695 |
355 |
23,302 |
41.6% |
|
Pulaski |
14,756 |
5,891 |
419 |
21,066 |
28.0% |
|
Franklin |
7,570 |
12,888 |
493 |
20,951 |
61.5% |
|
Scott |
9,730 |
9,827 |
458 |
20,015 |
49.1% |
|
Jessamine |
10,363 |
8,102 |
360 |
18,825 |
43.0% |
|
Laurel |
12,667 |
4,722 |
397 |
17,786 |
26.5% |
|
Shelby |
9,062 |
7,380 |
343 |
16,785 |
44.0% |
|
Pike |
9,011 |
7,131 |
466 |
16,608 |
42.9% |
|
Nelson |
7,511 |
7,386 |
331 |
15,228 |
48.5% |
Basically, because of the excellent work of the coordinated campaign and the effort that was expended, Beshear kept it close in most of the counties, and ran up the score in the more urban areas. And Jefferson County helped lock it in.
Heather French Henry was the second-best performing Democrat in the election, and should probably run for something again.
In fact, there were 30 counties where Henry outperformed Beshear, including Jefferson. She lost by 4.5 points, which was not bad compared to how everyone else did last night. (I have to admit, though, that I thought HFH was a lock, and was very surprised that she lost. More on that in another article.)
The Libertarian candidate was a wild card.
Bevin lost by about 5,000 votes. Hicks got about 28,000 votes. How many of those came from Bevin’s base? How many from Beshear? How many would not have voted at all without a Libertarian option?
We don’t know firm answers to these questions – but I bet those questions are being asked in both the Bevin and Beshear camps.
The three highest vote-getters in the race were Ball, Cameron, and Quarles.
Here are all the vote totals for everyone, in order.
- Ball – 855,720
- Cameron – 822,932
- Quarles – 820,971
- Harmon – 779,327
- Adams – 746,275
- Beshear – 709,577
- Bevin – 704,388
- Henry – 681,763
- Stumbo – 602,004
- Donahue – 574,561
- Bowman – 555-013
- Conway – 544,872
- Hugenberger – 46,549
- Gilpin – 44,584
- Hicks – 28,425
–30–