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Quick Look: How Genesee County Voted

By Philip Anselmo

On a cursory glance over the election result totals for Genesee County released earlier this morning, it looks as if county residents followed pretty closely along the major voting lines sketched out last night. In other words, the county, as did its greater districts, remained for the most part Republican. As Legislator Jay Grasso predicted yesterday afternoon, Genesee County remained a "red county"—even in its support of the McCain/Palin ticket.

Sen. John McCain was the clear favorite in this county, pulling in 14,573 votes, compared with the 10,029 levers pulled for President Elect Barack Obama. Most of the McCain supporters came from the towns and villages, but he did pick up a majority in the city of Batavia, as well (2,955 to Obama's 2,823).

We've got the complete numbers for how each municipality voted in the county. We can get into more detail later today, if folks are interested.

Philip Anselmo

Paul: This post is the presidential breakdown for the county, with the specifics for the city. Are you looking for individual municipality numbers? If so, I can get those up later today after some calculations.

Nov 5, 2008, 9:44am Permalink
Daniel Jones

The fact that Batavia came within 200 votes is remarkable, it shows that this once strong Republican stronghold is trending heavily towards the Democrats.

Nov 5, 2008, 7:06pm Permalink
Douglas Poole

My only comment is in Genesee, Livingston or Wyoming Counties anyone on the Republican ticket is a sure winner.
You could run Mother Teresa vs. Adolf Hitler and if he
had the Republican nod he would win 3 to 1.

Nov 5, 2008, 11:10pm Permalink
Paul Weiss

Sorry it took me so long to respond but I'm in Florida and we did a lot of celebrating.

With myself and my family having been involved in Batavia and Genesee County Democratic politics for many years, I would love to see the election results in detail.I was the Democratic committeeman for years in the 3rd Ward 1st District. I would like to see how my old neighborhood did. I always remembered that the 6th ward 2nd district would usually vote the way the city would go. On election night that was the district we always looked at first to tell how the City would go. Another thing I always use to look at was the vote for State Supreme Court. That, usually is the base line for Democratic and Rupublican voters. This is because the candidates are from Erie County and usually Democrats vote for the Democratic candidate and Republicans vote for the Republican candidate. Compare that to how your presidential candidate and congressional candidate did in election districts and towns and you can see if Obama and the others ran ahead of the Democratic turnout.

One other historical piece of information is that John Kennedy carried the City of Batavia in 1960. You will also see that Lyndon Johnson carried Genesee County in 1964 and I think Bill Clinton carried Batavia in both 1992 and 1996. Even Elliott Spitzer and Hillary Clinton did very well in 2006. The point I make is that a Democrat can do well in Genesee County.

These are just some ideas from a "has been."

Nov 6, 2008, 8:21am Permalink

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