One of the story lines of the California recall election is the emergence of Larry Elder as a new force for California Republicans. This is enhanced by his large lead in the "replacement" part of the ballot. This is usually reported something like this: CandidatePartyVotesPctLarry A. ElderRep2,402,42047.0%Kevin PaffrathDem502,4319.8%Kevin L. FaulconerRep440,0428.6%Brandon M. RossDem286,9015.6%John CoxRep225,4044.4%Kevin KileyRep162,1133.2%Jacqueline McGowanDem147,4462.9%Joel … Continue reading No, Larry Elder Didn’t “Win”

Looks like Gavin Newsom is going to comfortably avoid being recalled. But for a while there the polls indicated a close race. One poll especially caused panic among the Governor's backers: a SurveyUSA poll released on August 4th that showed the Yes vote leading 51-40%. Some other polls at the time showed a close result, … Continue reading How You Ask a Question Matters

[As usual for these map-based posts, the bigger your screen, the better.] I'll continue the analysis of building and census data that I started in my previous post. Today I introduce a new metric, which determines how close together buildings are in a given census tract. For each building in a tract, we measure how … Continue reading Crowded, or not