PREVIOUSLY:

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Last week, following a statewide extension due to the pandemic, the Humboldt County Elections Office finally published its final, precinct-by-precinct tally of the March 3 election.

That means we finally have the data to engage in a favorite LoCO pastime — that is, the placing of those results on maps, so’s we can see which neighborhoods voted for who. As it happens, the highest-profile of the races in this last cycle — the Democratic presidential primary, the races for county Supervisor in the First and Second Districts — make for maybe the less interesting maps this time around. But we’ve also run up some maps for Measure T, the Eureka school bond measure, and Measure S, the property tax assessment for the Arcata Fire District, and they seem telling.

A couple of notes. Every election, the county elections office “consolidates” several precincts into one, so as to reduce unnecessary complexity; sometimes those consolidations leave you with weird geographies. That’s just how it is. Second, in several of these maps you’ll see a couple of weird artifacts on the bay-facing side of the Samoa Peninsula near Manila. Those are joined to Eureka-based precincts, and no one lives there. It’s just that I forgot to erase them when I erased all the intervening water. Ignore ‘em.

OK, let’s get to the maps! 

DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY

Bernie Sanders, in green, swept Humboldt County almost everywhere. A couple of low-population precincts went for Bloomberg (red), including in the Fieldbrookish 5MK-9 precinct, which had a grand total of one voter in the Democratic primary.

The tony homes along North Bank Road aggregated into Precinct 5PA-3 made up the only Elizabeth Warren (yellow) precinct in the county. Ten people voted in the primary out in the 2MR precinct, along the banks of the middle stretch of the Mad River; three of them went for Joe Biden (blue), and that was enough for the win.

Amy Klobuchar (purple) turns out to have a bunch of fans who all live next to one another in two tiny precincts in Fernbridge and Fortuna outskirts. Henceforth let it be known: That’s Klobu Country!

The whited-out precincts had no Democratic primary voters whatsoever.

FIRST DISTRICT SUPERVISOR

Incumbent Rex Bohn (red) cruised to easy victory with more than 60 percent of the First District vote overall, but challenger Cliff Berkowitz (blue) takes home bragging rights for two precincts: The area around Lowell Street south of Harris (97-94 Berkowitz) and whatever you call the area of the Mattole watershed that doesn’t include Petrolia and vicinity (68-66).

SECOND DISTRICT SUPERVISOR

Meanwhile, down in the Second District, incumbent Estelle Fennell (red) finds herself in the first supervisorial runoff election in Humboldt County in 10 years. Failing to get 50 percent of the vote against four other candidates in the primary, she’ll face a runoff election against second-place finisher Michelle Bushnell (blue) in November.

This is like one of those national presidential maps, where the country appears awash in Republican red no matter which candidate actually wins. Bushnell, with only 31 percent of the vote, certainly appears to have won the acreage race. Alas for her, Fennell — with 47.5 percent of the final vote — was much more popular up in Fortuna, where the people live. 

MEASURE R

The Arcata Fire District’s Measure R, a special property assessment to fund fire services, needed two-thirds of the vote to pass. It failed.

Those precincts colored green, above, met the two-thirds threshold. The precincts in red may have voted in favor in the measure or not, but in any case their residents didn’t vote in favor by the required two-thirds margin.

It’s impossible to ignore the geographic disparity, here. Lefty Arcata voted strongly in favor of its fire district, sometimes by astounding margins. McKinleyville and Manila did not, nor did the weathier suburbs in the Bayside area. Since the measure’s failure, Arcata Fire is now closing one of its three fire stations on a rotating basis.

MEASURE T

The Eureka School District’s Measure T did better than the Arcata Fire District’s similar measure, due in no small part to the fact that it only required 55 percent of the vote to win. It ended up with 56.77 percent.

It was a pretty big turnaround from Election Night, when the $18 million bond issue ended with only 53.65 percent of the vote — a failure. But those left-leaning votes came rolling in post-Election Day and lifted the school district above the threshold. It will get its $18 million for emergency repairs.

The map follows the same pattern as Arcata Fire, and confirms the vote-counting timeline. The left-leaning city-dwellers voted strongly in favor of the measure; the more conservative outskirts in Cutten and the like voted against it, or not-strongly-enough for it. Generally speaking, the closer you are to Old Town, the more in favor of the school system you are. Many of the lefty precincts in Old Town and Downtown voted in favor of school bonds by well over a 2-1 margin.

It makes sense that areas with more conservative people are more likely to oppose “big government.” It’s a bit surprising that they also seem far more likely to oppose little government — schools, fire districts, matters that were once a simple matter of civic pride.