It took about four weeks for the San Diego County Registrar of Voters to finish counting every single vote of the 2008 General Election and then upload the vote database to their web site. After anxiously waiting for a few weeks, I took the database and converted it into a usable format and started producing some reports that allowed me to drill down and see exactly how each community and city voted.
I’ved used the term “community” to describe a place within the City of San Diego boundary, such as Mira Mesa and La Jolla and the term “unincorporated” means that the place is not a city, such as Julian and Alpine.
The data is first grouped into 18 cities and unincorporated area (19 total groups). The City of San Diego and unincorporated area are then broken down by community. After scanning each of the totals, it makes it very easy to compare the different political viewpoints of each of the communities. For example, Proposition 8 received an unsurprising 83% opposition in Hillcrest, while the Campo area voted 77% in favor of the proposition.