By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One showed bullet votes in the council at-large primary overall with a bit of detail in Congressional District 8. Now let’s get into the geography of bullet votes by examining the ten largest communities in the county, at least in terms of Democratic primary voters. They are:
Rockville
Bethesda
Silver Spring East County (the portion of Silver Spring outside the Beltway except for zip codes 20902 and 20906)
Gaithersburg
Silver Spring Downtown (the portion of Silver Spring that is inside the Beltway)
Potomac
Germantown
Chevy Chase
Wheaton
Glenmont/Norbeck (zip code 20906 except for Leisure World)
And we are going to throw in Leisure World and Takoma Park too because why not!
Let’s start with Upcounty, East County and the upper Georgia Avenue corridor.
Wheaton and Glenmont/Norbeck have large Latino populations. County Executive Marc Elrich won both of them in last year’s primary.
Leisure World is the county’s largest retirement community. It regularly leads the county in turnout and is a must-visit place for politicians. Blair won Leisure World over Elrich by six points.
Silver Spring East County, roughly the U.S. 29 corridor outside of the Beltway, is the most concentrated area of Black Democrats. Elrich won this area and Will Jawando finished first here.
Upcounty, a large region defined here, was won by David Blair in the county executive primary.
Gaithersburg, which has both incorporated and unincorporated areas, was won by Blair by 10 points. Laurie-Anne Sayles was once a member of the Gaithersburg City Council.
Germantown is a racially diverse Upcounty population center. Blair had a 1.4 point margin over Elrich here.
More to come in Part Three!