Lincoln County is directly north of Clark County (Las Vegas). It is 70% Mormon. Here’s the numbers:
| COUNTY | %MORMON | %CATHOLIC | %MINORITY | BUSH/KERRY | McCAIN/OBAMA | ANGLE/REID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LINCOLN | 70% | 14% | 14% | 77/20 | 71/25 | 67/22 |
Lincoln County is 14% minority. We know that minorities voted Reid 68-78%. That accounts for 14% of the population and about half of Reid’s votes. The rest is pretty much Mormon.
Notice the huge shift from past voting patterns as the Mormons abandoned Angle to vote for Reid.
Actually, there was a shift.
Nevada has a “none of the above” line on the ballot. In Lincoln County I think that about 4-5% chose that to express their displeasure with Angle. Angle attended a church where the preacher was Bible thumpin’ moron. He started mouthing off about Mormons. Angle disavowed any belief in his dingbattery but there was at least some damage done.
Here’s the numbers on most of the Nevada counties. You can draw your own conclusions.
| COUNTY | %MORMON | %CATHOLIC | %MINORITY | BUSH/KERRY | McCAIN/OBAMA | ANGLE/REID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLARK | 16 | 47 | 45 | 47/52 | 39/58 | 41/54 |
| CHURCHILL | 32 | 29 | 18 | 72/26 | 64/33 | 63/28 |
| DOUGLASS | 14 | 51 | 12 | 63/34 | 57/42 | 60/35 |
| ELKO | 35 | 41 | 25 | 78/20 | 68/28 | 64/25 |
| EUREKA | 31 | 45 | 15 | 77/20 | 76/19 | 69/18 |
| HUMBOLDT | 24 | 51 | 27 | 72/25 | 63/34 | 57/32 |
| LANDER | 28 | 40 | 33 | 78/20 | 71/28 | 63/26 |
| LYON | 28 | 45 | 18 | 65/33 | 58/40 | 60/32 |
| MINERAL | 23 | 37 | 23 | 57/40 | 49/47 | 43/45 |
| NYE | 29 | 32 | 17 | 59/39 | 58/39 | 54/37 |
| WASHOE | 12 | 57 | 30 | 51/47 | 56/43 | 45/50 |
| WHITE PINE | 40 | 48 | 21 | 69/29 | 64/32 | 67/22 |
I appreciate the information, that's a smart way to analyze, but I don't understand your statement at all. Looking at the Lincoln County data, I see that Kerry got 20%, Obama got 25%, and Reid got 22%. So it looks to me like Reid got about the same number of votes as non-Mormon democrats. I don't see any "huge shift from past voting patterns", much less "Mormons abandoned Angle". It looks like Mormons voted FOR angle.
As you said, 14% are minority and reid took over 2/3rds of the minority. Catholics actually split their vote republican/democrat, so that's at least another 5%, leaving Reid with 7% of his vote coming from Mormons.
But let's not quibble or guess. Presume that every non-Mormon chose Angle. That's 28% of the electorate. Presume Reid's 22% was entirely Mormon. That leaves 39% for Angle. So at worst case, in Lincoln County Angle took the Mormon vote over Reid by 39% to 22%, close to a 2-1 margin.
Remember, the original argument was that Reid won a majority of the Mormon vote. But in this county, he clearly didn't come CLOSE to winning a majority of the Mormon vote.
Every county you showed where Mormons made up more than 30% of the vote, it looks like Angle crushed Reid. Your numbers support my contention that Mormons did NOT vote for Reid over Angle. Thank you for that information.
Now, maybe the more interesting question is, did Catholics vote more for Reid than Angle, either because a lot of Catholics do vote Democrat? We know a lot of Hispanics are Catholic, and Reid crushed Angle in the Hispanic vote, so it wouldn't be surprising. Catholics might also have been turned off by Angle's brand of Christianity.
But the particular counties you gave don't show that -- some majority-catholic counties picked Reid, but some were strongly for Angle.
Thank you for posting that. Lincoln county seems to be a LDS bastion in Nevada, 70% LDS, at least % wise. Of course per wikipedia it only has a pop. of 4165 as of the 2000 census, as opposed to almost 2 million for Clark county, which is pretty amazing by itself! Reid lost Lincoln county, getting 22% of the vote. If that’s right, then it doesn’t seem like there could be a majority of LDS voting for Reid, especially if it is true that LDS have higher voter turnout than the general population.
“Notice the huge shift from past voting patterns as the Mormons abandoned Angle to vote for Reid.”
I must have looked from this to your chart about 10 times before I realized it had to be a joke!
“I’m sure we have exit polling but it’s not worth a phone call to Nevada to find out, just look at the general.”
I know I would still like to see it if it exists. I think it is bizarre, considering all the theories that were being put forth in the run up to the election, if someone didn’t ask the question.
Freegards