The summer of 2024 saw losses for two DSA-endorsed incumbents in the U.S. House of Representatives and more hopeful developments down ballot. This article, the first in an ongoing series, presents maps to show how some of these elections played out on a precinct-by-precinct level.
Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush paid for their opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza as pro-Israel groups blanketed their districts in campaign cash. Bowman’s defeat was the most expensive primary campaign in U.S. history. Bush’s was the runner-up.
A map of Bush’s 46%-51% loss on August 6 tracks the so-called “Delmar Divide” running through St. Louis — a geographic byword for the region’s racial segregation. North of Delmar Boulevard and east of Kingshighway, an area including most of St. Louis’s Black population and some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, Bush generally did well. In Whiter and wealthier parts of the district, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell dominated.
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A map of Bush’s 46%-51% loss on August 6 tracks the so-called “Delmar Divide” running through St. Louis — a geographic byword for the region’s racial segregation. North of Delmar Boulevard and east of Kingshighway, an area including most of St. Louis’s Black population and some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, Bush generally did well. In Whiter and wealthier parts of the district, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell dominated.
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A stark divide is also visible in Bowman’s 59%-41% loss to Westchester County Executive George Latimer on June 26. In addition to huge spending by pro-Israel PACs, Bowman also had to cope with redistricting that shifted the 16th District north away from his political base in the Bronx. Bowman won 82% of the vote in the portion of the Bronx that remained in the district but only 36% of the much larger vote cast in Westchester County.
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The goal of this project is to capture fine-grained data from as many DSA-endorsed campaigns as possible and present them in the Democratic Left. Any one campaign will have its local peculiarities. Taken together, they may allow us to better understand our strengths and weaknesses as an election-winning operation.
Precinct-level election data can be difficult to track down, and may not ultimately be available for every election. Election authorities generally publish this data, if they publish it at all, in the format and on the schedule of their choosing.
But once you know where the data lives and how it is formatted, it is relatively easy to produce more maps for the jurisdiction — for instance, of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s dominant performance in her own primary.
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Or, more interestingly, because the elections were more seriously contested, we can map the performance of New York City DSA’s slate of candidates for the state legislature. Within New York City, NYC DSA returned three state senators and five assembly members and won one of three challenges against incumbents in the state assembly by electing Claire Valdez in District 37. The districts of uncontested DSA incumbents appear in red below.
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DSA candidates put up victories or strong performances in several other elections this summer. Evan MacKay, running to represent Cambridge in the Massachusetts state house, lost by just 41 votes to an incumbent that had never previously received less than 83% of the vote in a primary during a long career in local politics.
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In and around Burlington, Vermont, state Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky came second in the Democratic primary to represent the Chittenden Central senatorial district, advancing to the general election for the multi-seat district. As one of three candidates pursuing three seats associated with the district in the general election, Vyhovsky will presumably be elected. The maps below represent the results in the Democratic primary. Vyhovsky is currently the only representative of the Vermont Progressive Party in the state senate and will appear on the ballot as a Democratic-Progressive fusion candidate.
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On that same day, J.P. Lyninger won a Louisville City Council seat with 48.7% of the vote in a three-way race.
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No map or aggregation of data can match the insights available to the organizers who ran DSA’s campaigns supporting these candidates on the ground. Anybody interested in writing about their experience on a DSA-endorsed electoral campaign should reach out to [email protected].