Abbie's Real Life Blog

Another article about Missouri in the New York Times today, this time about the primary results.  It’s complete with photos and graphics!  I really like the map breakdown- somebody spent some time on that.  There are maps that show county-by-county breakdown of votes, and then if you click on the Margin of Victory tab, you can see maps with little circles that represent how large the margin of victory was for the winner.  Mouse over any county and see the statistics. 

For instance, Huckabee won by one vote over McCain in Crawford County.  And Obama pulled off victories in the more urban parts of the state, including the Kansas City, St. Louis, and Columbia areas, but then also Nodaway County (where he had an eleven point lead over Hillary, surprisingly).  Nodaway County is home to Maryville, Missouri, which is home to Northwest Missouri State University, so maybe that’s why?

If you click on the drop-down menus at the top of the screen with the map breakdown, you can see the same data for any of the states that have already held primaries.  Useful stuff!

Speaking of Nodaway County, Wikipedia says that Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice, attended Conception Seminary College at Conception Abbey in Nodaway County before he gave up his quest to become a priest.  That is also surprising information.  He’s from Georgia originally; how did he end up at seminary in northeast Missouri?

You can find out such fascinating information on Wikipedia.

Back to the NYT article about the primary: in Missouri, we don’t register for a party affiliation ahead of time.  When we show up at the voting site, we are asked which ballot we want, and then we can choose then.  The article says that many more people voted as Democrats than Republicans on Tuesday.  823,754 to 589,173, in fact.  I kind of feel that that bodes well for November, regardless of who the eventual nominees are.