As we come to the end of 2006 it is time to look back at the election. I have looked at the numbers for both Walberg v. Renier and DeVos v. Granholm in the 7th District. I was very surprised by what I found. In the 7th District Granholm defeated DeVos by 15,958 votes. Granholm won 4 of the 7 counties in the district and received better than 55% in Washtenaw, Eaton, and Calhoun. Granholm even won Jackson County by 914 votes.

In the 7th District Tim Walberg defeated Sharon Renier by 9,683 votes. As I looked at this my first thought was that it must be as a result of a large drop off of voters from the Governors race to the Congressional race. While there were 7,421 fewer votes cast for Congress than Governor that is still 2,200 short of what Renier needed to catch Walberg. I would even argue that most of those 7,000 voters were Schwarz Republicans who would not vote for Walberg. I believe that the drop off is a result of a race that no one was interested in. There were 300 more votes cast for State House than for Congress.

It is interesting to look at the percentages that each county voted for Renier and Granholm.

Branch: Renier 39.79% 5,572 votes, Granholm 47.98% 6,901 votes.
Calhoun: Renier 48.83% 21,260 votes, Granholm 57.83% 25,854 votes.
Eaton: Renier 49.51% 22,108 votes, Granholm 57.65% 26,611 votes.
Hillsdale: Renier 32.54% 5,000 votes, Granholm 40.83% 6,408 votes.
Jackson: Renier 45.82% 25,281 votes, Granholm 50.06% 28,450 votes.
Lenawee: Renier 42.36% 14,379 votes, Granholm 47.11% 16,295 votes.
Washtenaw: Renier 43.74% 19,065 votes, Granholm 55.89% 22,402 votes.

In every County Renier under performed.

There has been a lot of speculation that Walberg did not do as well as expected. What is interesting is that he out performed Dick DeVos in every County. In all 7 counties Walberg had a higher percentage and 5,385 more votes than DeVos even with fewer votes cast.

Branch: Walberg 55.30% 7,744 votes, DeVos 50.39% 7,248 votes.
Calhoun: Walberg 43.48% 18,930 votes, DeVos 42.17% 18,852 votes.
Eaton: Walberg 43.33% 21,135 votes, DeVos 41.11% 18,977 votes.
Hillsdale: Walberg 63.77% 9,798 votes, DeVos 57.38% 9,005 votes.
Jackson: Walberg 51.00% 28,140 votes, DeVos 48.46% 27,536 votes.
Lenawee: Walberg 55.20% 18,740 votes, DeVos 51.06% 17,662 votes.
Washtenaw: Walberg 46.60% 17,861 votes, DeVos 44.11% 17,683 votes.

I am not sure what this means. My gut reaction is that this district is trending Democratic. In Eaton Democrats took control of the County Commission. In Calhoun Democrats defeated an incumbent commissioner and now have a 5-2 majority.

There are 10 State House Districts that are at least partially in the 7th Congressional District (52nd, 54th, 55th 57th, 58th 62nd, 63rd, 64th, 65th, and 71st). There were no open seats. The only incumbents who lost were the two Republicans who lost in the 64th and 65th. When you add up the votes in all 10 districts Republicans won by only 3,255 votes 50.66% to 49.33%. The 58th district (Branch and Hillsdale Counties) inflated the Republican numbers. Bruce Caswell won by 13,392 votes 72.9%. If the Democrat in this race had received the same percentage as Renier Democrats would have received 7,000 more votes than Republicans. What these numbers tell me is that this district will support a Democrat if there is a strong Democrat running.

I will be interested to read what others make of these numbers.

Labels: 2006 Election