Precinct Wesley/Day Block — 2020 election results

Wesley, Maine

Certified results

How this precinct voted

Office	Dem	Rep	Other	Total	Dem share	Rep share
President	27	45	4	76	37.5%	62.5%
U.S. Senate	23	55	0	78	29.5%	70.5%
U.S. House	31	59	0	90	34.4%	65.6%

See this precinct on the live map →

Why the model expects this result

A typical precinct in this model sits at 52.3% Democratic on the two-party vote. This precinct's neighbourhood traits move that to 40.1%.

What pushes it toward the Democrats: Population density.

What pushes it toward the Republicans: % in 10+ unit buildings, % non-Hispanic White and Average annual pay.

It actually came out at 37.5%, close to what the traits suggest.

See these numbers as a table

Each fact and how far it moves the model's guess

Fact	Running guess	Change (points)
Starting point: a typical area	52.3%	—
% in 10+ unit buildings	46.5%	-5.8
% non-Hispanic White	43.3%	-3.2
Average annual pay	40.7%	-2.6
% uninsured	38.1%	-2.6
Population density	40.6%	+2.5
% mobile homes	38.5%	-2.1
All other facts together	40.1%	+1.6
What the model expects here	40.1%	—

• % in 10+ unit buildings — Housing type — large (10+ unit) apartment buildings (urban marker).
• % non-Hispanic White — Racial makeup — white, non-Hispanic residents.
• Average annual pay — Local wages — average annual pay.
• % uninsured — Health-insurance coverage gap.
• Population density — Urban density — people per km², urban vs rural.
• % mobile homes — Housing type — mobile/manufactured homes (rural marker).

Across all precincts this model explains about 73% of the variation in results, and is typically off by 8 points for any one precinct. The model only knows facts about the area, such as age, pay and housing. It knows nothing about the people standing for election, what they said, what mattered locally, or who turned out to vote. That is why the real result can be a long way from its guess. These are patterns across whole areas. They do not tell you how any one person voted, and they do not show that one thing causes another. When two things go together, such as low pay and low rents, the model cannot tell them apart, so it shares the credit between them.

How does this area compare with the rest of the state?

One row for each fact. Every dot is an area in this state, placed by how far that fact moved the guess there. This area is the ringed dot.

See this area's numbers as a table

Each fact, this area's value, and how far it moved the guess

Fact	Value here	Moves the guess by	Towards
% in 10+ unit buildings	2.0%	-5.8 points	Republicans
% non-Hispanic White	—	-3.2 points	Republicans
Average annual pay	$50,219	-2.6 points	Republicans
% uninsured	10.5%	-2.6 points	Republicans
Population density	—	+2.5 points	Democrats
% mobile homes	11.4%	-2.1 points	Republicans

this arealow highnot measured here

Every other dot is one of the 561 areas in Maine that the same computer looked at. For each fact we only show the areas where it was one of the six that mattered most, so you are seeing that fact where it counted, not everywhere.

How the model was built

We give a computer about 20 facts about each area and ask it to guess how the area voted. It is never shown any votes. The facts are things like age, race, pay, jobs, health cover and the kind of homes people live in. They come from the 2020 Census and from other government figures.

To check the guesses are fair, we train the computer on some states and then test it on states it has never seen. That way it cannot simply remember the answer.

Each bar shows how much one fact moved the guess up or down for this area. Some facts are measured for the whole county, so they are the same for every area in that county. Where two neighbouring areas differ, it is their own 2020 Census figures that pull them apart.

For the technically minded: the model is gradient-boosted trees (XGBoost), the target is the two-party Democratic share, the bars are SHAP values, and it is validated by holding out whole states. County-level inputs include the Census/CDC Social Vulnerability Index 2018–2022, County Business Patterns and wage data.