Monroe County 2024 results: GOP wins Election Day tally for commissioner, other notable nuggets
Monroe County numbers from the Nov. 5, 2024 election delivered overall outcomes that were mostly expected.
[.pdf file of results] [.csv file of results]
Even the possible exception, which was the District 62 state representative race, between Dave Hall (R) and Thomas Horrocks (D), was not a complete surprise.
Monroe County delivered a solid 56-percent majority for Horrocks (14,401) over Hall (11,385), which was not enough to overcome the numbers from Brown and Jackson counties. In those two counties, Hall put up overwhelming numbers, for a final tally in District 62 for Hall of 18,367, compared to 17,572 for Horrocks, which was a 2-point margin.
Those results are still unofficial. They won’t become final until the provisional ballots are adjudicated, next Friday, 10 days after the election.
Monroe County is known to lean for Democrats overall, with the city of Bloomington anchoring the Democratic Party strength. That basic geographic slice is evident for most any election data that is plotted out on a map.
Still, there were some interesting patterns lurking in the data that might not be self-evident.
For example, even outside the city of Bloomington in Monroe County, Democrat Kamala Harris managed to get more votes than Republican Donald Trump.
Outside the city limits of Bloomington, Harris received 16,709 votes, compared to 15,845 for Trump. Inside the city, Harris had a 4-to-1 advantage, with 20,073 votes compared to 5,109 for Trump.
County commissioner District 3: Madeira versus VanDeventer
The one contested local race between candidates named on the ballot featured Jody Madeira (D) and Joe VanDeventer (R)—for the District 3 county commissioner seat. The overall expectation was a win for Madeira, and that proved to be the outcome, as she received 33,591 votes (59.23 percent), compared to 23,119 (40.77 percent).
Overall, VanDeventer outperformed Trump at the top of the Republican ticket by about 5 points. Trump’s countywide numbers were 35.44 percent.
Even though Harris’s numbers were better than Trump’s outside Bloomington city limits, Madeira fell short of VanDeventer’s tally outside of Bloomington. She received 14,864 votes outside Bloomington, compared to 17,193 for VanDeventer. That’s likely a testament to VanDeventer’s familiarity in the community, as a long-time public servant for Monroe County and the city of Bloomington governments.
A general discernible pattern is that GOP candidates perform better among Election Day voters compared to those who cast their ballot in advance, either early in person or by absentee ballot. For example, Trump’s Election Day numbers, at 45.30 percent, were 10 points better than his overall tally.
VanDeventer, though, would have actually won the race, if it had been based just on Election Day numbers. Among Election Day voters, VanDeventer received 11,937 votes (50.1 percent), compared to 11,474 (49.01 percent) for Madeira. But Madeira had a big majority among advance voters, which gave her a comfortable overall margin of victory.
Unopposed Democrats
When a candidate is unopposed on the ballot, it is the least surprising result in the world that they win the election.
What can be interesting is the difference in the number of votes that unopposed candidates get in different races.
When there is only one candidate offered on the ballot, many voters will choose not to fill in the box, sometimes with deliberate intent. It’s called under-voting the race.
One way to measure the popularity of a Democrat running unopposed is to compare their numbers to the top of the ticket, which this year was Kamala Harris.
In the District 60 state senate race, unopposed Democrat Shelli Yoder got 38,391 Monroe County votes, compared to 34,702 for Kamala Harris—which is about 10.5 percent more votes for Yoder than for Harris. District 60 does not cover all of Monroe County—the southeastern corner is left out.
Measured in the same District 60 precincts, but in the District 2 Monroe County commissioner race, unopposed Democrat Julie Thomas also out-polled Harris, but not by as much as Yoder did. In the District 60 senate precincts in Monroe County Thomas received 35,759 votes compared to Harris’s 34,702.
One possible drag on Thomas’s tally could be the fact that the county commissioner races are farther down the ballot than the state-level races. But compared to other county-level races, Thomas’s total countywide was clearly lower.
For example, in the coroner’s race, unopposed Democrat Jeff Hall received 38,971 votes, which was pretty typical, compared to Thomas’s countywide total of 37,957.
Thomas still outperformed Harris, at the top of the ticket, who received 37,180 votes. But it wasn’t everywhere in the county that Thomas outperformed Harris. Inside the city of Bloomington, Thomas fell short of Harris’s totals in several precincts.
What accounts for Thomas’s overperformance compared to the top of the ticket, as well as her underperformance compared to other unopposed Democrats?
One possibility is that Thomas was boosted by voters outside the city of Bloomington, who generally support Republican candidates, but who checked the box for Thomas, based on her opposition to Bloomington’s annexation efforts.
But countering that boost might have been Democrats who supported Peter Iversen in his primary campaign against Thomas. The race proved to be pretty close—Thomas had a 3-point margin.
Democrats who supported Iversen could have deliberately under-voted the District 2 commissioner race, as an indirect way of registering their continued support for Iversen. Iversen’s support was strongest inside the city of Bloomington, and that’s also where Thomas underperformed compared to the top of the ticket.
