By Adam Pagnucco.
Incumbent Marc Elrich survived the most expensive MoCo executive race of all time to win by 32 votes after a recount. This part of the series will show the geography and demographics of his win.
The chart below shows Elrich’s vote percentage by region and local area. Areas in red show first place finishes and areas in orange show second place finishes.
In geographic terms, Elrich’s base has always started in Takoma Park and Downtown Silver Spring, and this year was no exception. He added the Route 29 corridor, much of the Georgia Avenue corridor and a few lightly populated areas in Upcounty. But make no mistake, Elrich’s performance heavily depended on the county’s progressive southeastern precincts.
Now let’s look at the vote percentages for David Blair, Elrich’s principal rival. Areas in dark blue show first place finishes, areas in light blue show second place finishes and the one area in white (Takoma Park) shows a third place finish.
Blair’s performance was the inverse of Elrich’s. Blair excelled in much of the county’s west and north but lagged in the southeast and east. Both Elrich and Riemer outpolled him in Takoma Park, the county’s most progressive local area.
Let’s begin comparing Elrich and Blair. The chart below shows the percentage spread between the two by region and local area. Bars to the left show a percentage gap for Elrich while those to the right show a percentage gap for Blair.
Elrich had big wins over Blair in Takoma Park, Silver Spring Downtown, Dickerson and Washington Grove. Blair had big wins over Elrich in Potomac, Damascus and North Potomac. Interestingly, the Democratic Crescent was split, with the southeast going heavily for Elrich and the southwest (Bethesda and Chevy Chase) going less heavily for Blair.
The chart below shows the spread in number of votes between the two. Again, bars to the left show net vote margins for Elrich while those to the right show net vote margins for Blair.
Elrich pulled most of his net votes from the southeast, the Route 29 corridor and the lower-to-mid Georgia Avenue Corridor. Blair pulled most of his net votes from Potomac, Gaithersburg and the southwest. This as much as anything shows how politically diverse Montgomery County really is, at least inside the Democratic Party.
Finally, the chart below shows how Elrich, Blair and Riemer did in the county’s racially concentrated precincts. (See my methodology post for definitions.)
Blair won the heavily Asian and White precincts while Elrich won the heavily Black and Latino precincts.
In terms of all the county’s voting precincts, Blair finished first in 136 precincts, Elrich finished first in 119 precincts and Riemer finished first in 4 precincts. Of those 4, one precinct cast a total of 2 votes in the executive race, another cast a total of 5 votes, one cast a total of 23 votes (precinct 9-45 in Gaithersburg) and one cast a total of 238 votes (precinct 13-65 in the Lyttonsville section of Silver Spring).
You may have noticed that this part of the series did not contain a lot of information about Riemer’s performance. That’s because I am saving Riemer’s numbers for Part Seven, in which I ask this question: did Riemer spoil the race for Blair? Don’t miss it!