Yesterday we mapped results of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District race from Tuesday. The race pitted Jane Dittmar (Democrat) against Tom Garrett (Republican). Democrats were hopeful that Dittmar could put this seat in play but the race ended up as a Garrett landslide (58%-42%). The 5th congressional district is crafted to favor Republicans (Romney won it by nearly 8 points in 2012).
Some tips for looking at the map:
- Click into each precinct to see how much it contributes to the overall district vote (big geographic precincts may not mean a big impact).
- Zoom into cities/densely populated areas to get a better sense of Dittmar’s support (or see images below), i.e. don’t be fooled by the old red/blue state trick where rural areas look big but actually represent fewer people.
- Notice where large chunks of dark red go uninterrupted for numerous precincts.
Virginia 5th Congressional District Results – November 2016
The images below zoom into heavy blue areas around the cities of Danville and Charlottesville. This strength is not readily apparent on the zoomed out map (you can play with it yourself above).
Danville
Charlottesville
Credits: This map was made thanks to Virginia’s fantastic election result feeds provided by the Department of Elections. We also owe gratitude to VPAP, not always known for its open source penchant, for posting the Virginia precinct map with KML data on Github.
Want this data for yourself or see an error and want to check the data? See source here. If it’s an error you see, please be sure to contact us.