After Bernie Sanders won the Oklahoma primary, one TU professor set out to analyze the victory of the Democratic presidential hopeful. Scott Carter, an economics professor at TU, set out to diagram the county-by-county results for each candidate..
Using 27 columns and just under 1,850 rows, Carter’s document outlines the full election results per county. The results show both Democrat and Republican results, and show any candidate that got multiple votes. Carter broke down the results by party and candidate, then condensed them to cut out those who only garnered a miniscule portion of the vote (labeling them as “residuals”). Finally, parties are joined to show how each candidate performed against one another.
Looking at the county results, a general trend is easy to see. While the Republican victors vary from one county to the next, Sanders won the Democratic vote in nearly every county. “The significant thing is that, head-to-head, Bernie beat everyone in Oklahoma,” Carter commented.
He recalled, “The stats are…1.5 Bernie votes for every Cruz [vote], 1.6 for every Clinton, and 1.7 for every Trump.” He continued, “What Sanders is doing in the heartland and the west is amazing and definitely shows that the white working class (in coalition with others including workers and people of color) are NOT flocking wholesale to Trump.”
Sanders defeated Clinton 22 delegates to 18 in the Oklahoma primary. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won with 15 delegates, while Donald Trump and Marco Rubio finished with 13 and 12 delegates, respectively.
