Provided by our data analyst, Nicholas Schrieber (@thekingscribe).
- Folks more experienced than me need to weigh in here, but it looks like the 4th got bluer this cycle. Any ED Lavelle won was won with less than a 40% margin, and 3 EDs were within the 5% margin.
- On the flip side, there are definitely areas to strengthen here for Ds, and expect that if Laura does great work over the next few years, that will happen.
- Laura Sturgeon (the next Senator from the 4th SD!) lost in the Greenville/Chateau country area; an area off of Concord Pike (between Rockland and Mt. Lebanon — what is this area called?); and 2 EDs just off of Lancaster Pike.
What do you think?
The neighborhood off Concord Pike to the west that Lavelle won is called Sharpley. It’s the location of the duPont Country Club, so it remains a Republican neighborhood, but it is getting bluer.
It includes 2 companion developments, Woodbrook and Edenridge they have blurred lines. Woodbrook just south and edenridge just north of Sharpley when you ride down Mt Lebenon toward the Vally you are passing through Edenridge for the most part. Sharpley is the oldest Edenridge was built through the 70’s
probably TMI but there you go:)
It also happens to be Lavelle’s home ED.
Krista Griffith actually won that ED so it only held Red cause it is Lavelles home turf
I don’t think it got bluer. I think Lavelle drove it bluer by voting the party line – against bipartisan legislation like ERA, gun control, etc. Sturgeon also benefited from the many voters who voted straight D – thank 45 for that.
Scott has a point. Lavelle could have done very little to demonstrate to his constituents that we wasn’t representing Seaford. He did nothing. Of course, he wasn’t expecting a challenger so there is that.
Lot of bad democrats voted for sturgeon and Ramone
Across the entire district there was about a ten-point swing from 2012 (I don’t count 2014 since it was a Republican wave year and Lavelle didn’t have a strong opponent). This was pretty consistent across the district, but that red RD off of 202 (Both Lavelle’s and Sturgeon’s home ED) swing 30 points towards Democrats, and Fairfax right across the street swing almost 40 points. Shows that a lot of this is very regional. The team also knocked a metric shit ton of doors in those neighborhoods, which really paid off. Similar story in Alapocas and Westover Hills.
Pike Creek was interesting, as there were also two competitive down-ballots races that drove out turnout on both sides. As a result, while Democratic turnout was way up, Sturgeon actually did worse percentage-wise in some of the far-out Pike Creek precincts, especially in Mike Smith’s home turf. But she still cleaned up where she needed to. Hard to see how this is competitive in the future, as Lavelle’s only hold-out was in those 202 neighborhoods where literally no one else has the reputation that he has.