Two final points about the 2018 North Dakota elections

Here's a couple of interesting points of analysis about the elections in North Dakota earlier this month, which included a whopping 13 (!!!) statewide elections in North Dakota this year (two federal legislative elections, six state executive elections, one state supreme court election, and four state referenda).

First, soon-to-be-former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (DNPL-ND) got a similar percentage of the vote in her unsuccessful U.S. Senate re-election bid this year to the percentage of the vote that she received in her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2000. Here's a set of maps, courtesy of J. Miles Coleman of Decision Desk HQ, comparing the 2018 U.S. Senate election in North Dakota to the 2000 gubernatorial election in North Dakota:

The #NDSen result this year was very similar to 2000, when Heitkamp ran for Governor. She lost to John Hoeven by 10% then. Most of her gains in 2018 were around Fargo & in American Indian counties. The western region, however, has gotten much redder, and cast more votes. #NDGov pic.twitter.com/OzoKQLh4PO

— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman) November 21, 2018

To make my point of analysis clearer, here's a map showing which areas of North Dakota comparing Heitkamp's 2012 U.S. Senate and 2018 U.S. Senate vote totals in each county, also courtesy of Coleman:

North Dakota was certainly a rough result for Democrats, but Sen. Heidi Heitkamp did make some gains from 2012. She improved in Sioux and Rolette counties, which are both overwhelmingly American Indian. The most populous county, Cass (Fargo), also swung to her. #NDSen pic.twitter.com/u6bwcs5Iuz

— J. Miles Coleman (@JMilesColeman) November 12, 2018

For those of you who have wondered whether the Bakken oil region played a role in defeating Heitkamp, the answer to that question is yes, but there were other parts of North Dakota that played a much larger role in Heitkamp's defeat, namely, the central part of the state, especially the mostly rural counties east of Ward County (home of Minot) and around Burleigh County (home of Bismarck, the state capital). In the 2012-2018 comparison map, Heitkamp did not lose as many votes in the Bakken oil region (centered around Williams and McKenzie counties in the far-western part of the state, the largest city in this region is Williston) as compared to, several mostly rural counties in the central part of the state, including McHenry County, Emmons County, and Kidder County, all of which saw massive (greater than 30%) swings towards the GOP from 2012 to 2018, whereas a lot of the counties in the Bakken oil region saw 10%-20% swings against Heitkamp from the 2012 U.S. Senate election to the 2018 U.S. Senate election. The massive swings in some rural counties in the central part of North Dakota are more attributable to Donald Trump's cult of personality aiding Kevin Cramer's bid to defeat Heitkamp than anything related to the oil industry. Another region of North Dakota that played a role in Heitkamp's defeat was the U.S. Route 281 corridor in the east-central part of the state, in which Heitkamp got fewer votes in every county along U.S. Route 281 except for Rolette County (home to the Turtle Mountain Native American reservation; there were large-scale Native American get-out-the-vote efforts in North Dakota in 2018 due to backlash against voter suppression efforts against Native Americans), and a couple of counties along U.S. Route 281 (Eddy and Foster) saw massive swings against Heitkamp from 2012 to 2018. Heitkamp had virtually zero chance of getting re-elected as soon as Trump's cult of personality became entrenched among most rural white voters in America.

Second, Williams County, home of Williston and the hub of the Bakken oil region in western North Dakota, played a rather significant role in the approval of 2018 North Dakota Measure 1, which was a referendum on whether or not to ban foreign campaign donations, establish a state ethics commission, and enact legal provisions pertaining to lobbying and conflicts of interest in North Dakota (map courtesy of Twitter user @cinyc9, whose real name is unknown):

2018 ND GE voters also voted on 4 ballot measures. According to @ballotpedia, Measure 1 created an ethics commission, banned foreign political contributions, and enacted provisions related to lobbying and conflicts of interest.

It passed by 7, largely on an east-west divide. pic.twitter.com/ZuRCVQHo98

— cinyc (@cinyc9) November 23, 2018

In the map above, green-colored precincts indicate precincts where the Yes option (in this case, pro-good government) got more votes than the No option (in this case, anti-good government), and red-colored precincts indicate precincts where the No/anti-good government option got more votes than the Yes/pro-good government option. The winning Yes/pro-good government coalition resembled a winning Dem-NPL coalition in a statewide race North Dakota, with one major exception: the area in and near Williston in Williams County. Even when she won a U.S. Senate seat in 2012, Heidi Heitkamp won only one precinct in Williams County, and even that precinct went for the No/anti-good government side on Measure 1 this year, and she didn't even come close to getting a majority or plurality of the vote in Williams County. In 2018, not a single Dem-NPL statewide candidate in an officially-partisan election carried a single Williams County precinct or came close to receiving a majority or plurality of the vote in Williams County, and Williams County was, as it usually is in officially-partisan elections in North Dakota, to the right of the state as a whole by a considerable margin. Despite that, voters in Williams County voted in favor of Measure 1 by a 54.1%-45.9% margin, which actually put Williams County slightly to the left of North Dakota as a whole (53.6%-46.4% in favor) on Measure 1. If, by some chance, a Dem-NPLer is able to win a statewide election in North Dakota at some point in the remainder of my lifetime, it would probably be by flipping the Williston area into the Dem-NPL column.