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The Shutout

14 Feb 2008 05:20 pm

DCRESULTS.png

Courtesy of Adam Bailey at DCist, a precinct-by-precinct map of the DC primary results. As you can see, Obama did best in the eastern half of the city (where there are no white people), Clinton did best west of Rock Creek park (where there are few black people). In the middle, things were in the middle. But Clinton lost all areas of the city. Indeed, out of the city's 142 precincts, Clinton won zero. In my precinct, the rapidly gentrifying 22nd, Clinton managed to secure 32 percent of the vote. I'd been taking the fact that I didn't see any Clinton signs in my area as an indication that her people really just weren't putting any kind of DC campaign together, but some others hypothesized that maybe there just weren't any Clinton supporters in the neighborhood. Evidently, though, about a third of my neighbors voted for Clinton, so perhaps if her team had put more of an operation together she might have managed to carry a precinct or two.

Clinton did best in Precinct 3, "the neighborhood including the Watergate, some G.W. housing, and the Foggy Bottom Historic District; but she still lost to Obama in a 275-243 vote." Nobody ever goes there, but fortunately my office is located in the Watergate (fortunate for the purposes of this post, unfortunate in the sense that my office is in an inconvenient location where nobody goes) so I took an illustrative photo:

Hillaryland

That's some tiny Foggy Bottom Historic District-protected houses in the foreground, a slice of the Watergate complex in the back. The GW students must have put Obama over the top.

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Comments (25)

Clearly Precinct 3 is the only precinct that even comes close to counting. It still doesn't count, mind you, but it comes close.

Enlighten someone who doesn't know Washington but would love to.

Why is that neighbourhood so ... unappreciated ? Is it seedy ? Or just out-of-the-way ? I always thought the Watergate was a prestigious address because a lot of important people stayed there because it was ... conveniently located.

So now am curious where the misunderstanding comes from.

DC has some of the worst taxi service I have ever seen. Apparently, it is common practice to fill the taxi with as many passengers as possible, so the drivers can collect extra fare? What's up with that?

Mark Penn has those elitists in Anacostia dead to rights.

That's my old neighborhood, Foggy Bottom. (Originally the area was a swamp and it smelled bad so was once one of the least desirable areas of the city). I worked at the State Department and went to Law School at GW. That's a great neighborhood, walking distance to Georgetown, the K Street corridor, the White House and DuPont Circle. There's a convenient subway stop too.

The houses are really really small (they were actually slave's quarters for the rich folk in Georgetown prior to the Civil War). There is no parking to speak of, on street but very limited and no garages, driveways or alleys in which to park. There are also a few apartment buildings on K Street. However, there is almost nothing of a commercial nature or shopping or restaurants in the area so people who don't live there don't go there.

When I lived there the neighborhood was a mix of GW students, GW professors, State Department employees and African American families who had been there since the 1800s and who owned many of the small houses in the area. That was thirty years ago though.

Halperin reporting that Clinton has won New Mexico.

Clearly this counts, because:

1. In total land area, NM is indeed a "big" state
2. Latte Liberals are only to be found in concentrated areas.
3. She won despite a powerful Hopi Prayer co-opted by the Obama campaign, "We are the one's we've been waiting for."

Precinct 3 must be where all the fewest "impressionable elites" live.

We need a huge map of the entire country broken down precinct by precinct (if Google Urf can handle it) of this kind of thing.

And then correlate it with campaign donations (maybe by census sub-bloc groups) and maybe with close-by Japanese steak-houses.

I am a GW student in Foggy Bottom now, and that sounds about right Sherry. Although maybe fewer African American families now, at least from what I have noticed.

..where all the fewest...

And to think for years I've worked within a block from my favorite political blogger and had no idea. Not even a random sighting.

No white people east of the park? Surely you jest. Or perhaps you've never heard of Capitol Hill, Brookland, Takoma Park, Logan Circle ...

Benjamin - the Watergate was an impressive address thirty years ago. The city has redeveloped in other directions, and the Foggy Bottom area, while far from seedy, is cut off by freeways and over-passes, and has an outdated urban-renewal era feel. The Watergate and the Kennedy Center, both of which are automobile-oriented, are characteristic of the area: "modern" in a Jetson's kind of way.

You just made a GW grad very happy to see the old haunts...

All that is very interesting. Thanks for the explanation Sherry and Bloix.
I think the picture looks quite lovely personally. So I assume nobody important lives in the Watergate complex anymore, do they ?

No white people east of the park? Surely you jest. Or perhaps you've never heard of Capitol Hill, Brookland, Takoma Park, Logan Circle ...

Plenty of white people east of the park (me and most all of my friends, e.g.) but few white people in the eastern quadrants of the city.

DC doesn't count because Hillary has lived there for the past 15 years.

IMO, the fuzzy dividing line on class/racial grounds is 16th Street, more than the park. Which is a way of agreeing with Yglesias's response to Bloix. Anyway, it's all a question of tendencies - there are black people living west of the park (it's DC, after all) just fewer than average.

Benjamin, the picture looks nice because Matthew found one of the few ways to take a picture of the Watergate with nice older houses in the foreground. Living in the Watergate is for people who want an apartment in a high-rise and easy access to their Lincoln parked in the underground garage. If you want a neighborhood where you can walk around the corner to a cafe or place to eat, you live somewhere else.

Matt - You can download the data at my site.

http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2008/02/dc_ward_and_pre.html

Since there were no exit polls, I ran a regression. My results show that African-Americans went for Obama by 86%, while whites and Hispanics both went 59% for Obama. That's just an estimate, but I think it's probably close.

I have never seen the inside of the Watergate. Is it nice at least or is it like other 70s building and the inside didn't age well either ? Isn't it surrounded by old houses ? The river is one side right ?

Ahh, nostalgia. I once lived in Cleveland Park and I used to run down Rock Creek Parkway and turn back when I got to the Watergate or thereabouts. I vividly remember those occasional, magical, crystalline fall or spring days when the city glowed and you'd go to the roof of the Hotel Washington and sip champagne and feel that you were the luckiest person in the world to be living in such a place.

Benjamin, the Watergate has undergone enough renovations that it's actually a very nice luxury hotel. While I'm not typically a fan of steakhouses, they have a great steakhouse restuarant there, as well. Apparently when it was first built it was not considered a high end hotel, but over the years the owners upgraded it to the point where it is.

Ben at 9:00pm captures the dynamic of Watergate residents very well. It's not such a bad place to stay if you're in DC for a conference, though (and if your employer can pick up the tab).

Benjamin - I work in the area. It does have Metro access (Foggy Bottom and the Farragut stops are right there), and pretty easy bus access to the rest of the city. But a big problem is that there are so many federal buildings around. State Department, World Bank, etc. Lots of offices, too. Between that and the university, almost all of the land is taken up. While food and shopping options do exist (there's a couple restaurants in Columbia Plaza), they're not nearly as many as in Georgetown or other parts of the city. Yeah, it's convenient to get to other places from there, but there's not much to keep you in the area.

It's nice to see so many fellow Colonials here - Go G-dubs!

As for the theory that GW students put Obama over the top, with admittedly no evidence, I'm not so sure it went like that. Most GW students (like me) are still registered to vote in their home states - and these are overwhelmingly from the Philly-Boston corridor. Since many of these states were important states for either candidate, it makes sense to me that these students would vote by absentee to try and put Obama over the top (especially among those students from "delegate rich" Pennsylvania).

Other that GW students, Foggy Bottom seems to be populated by old, rich, white people - many of whom are in constant battle with the University over its constant expansion. It could be that many voted not so much for Hillary, but against the candidate of the youth. Sick of hearing drunk students stumble along 26th street every Thursday-Saturday night, they cast their vote accordingly.

Or maybe Obama just had better organization - the day of the primaries I saw about 8 Obama supporters outside the Foggy Bottom metro stop exhorting people to vote. Not so much as a pro-Hillary sign could be found.

Benjamin - the Watergate was an impressive address thirty years ago.

Not in all respects. As I recall, they had a pesky little problem with burglaries there.


Comments closed February 28, 2008.

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