Map: How Tony Bennett Lost Indiana

The storyline of Tuesday night was of a mass teacher uprising allowing Democrat Glenda Ritz to topple GOP state superintendent Tony Bennett.

Electorally, Bennett’s share of the vote slipped significantly from 2008 in several key counties where other Republicans (Romney, Pence, Mourdock) won.

These losses are reflected in the map here: In counties shaded yellow, the percentage of the vote Bennett won in 2012 was lower than the percentage he won in 2008 — the deeper the yellow, the greater the loss. In counties shaded green, Bennett’s share of the vote increased in this election from 2008.

Below the map are a few takeaways.

A few takeaways from these numbers:

• Losses on home turf. Bennett not only saw his share of the vote in Allen County slip by 7 percentage points — he lost Allen County, the home of Fort Wayne. Pence won this county by 12. Romney won it by 17.
• 10+ percentage point drops. Despite solid Romney victories in all of these counties, Bennett saw huge drops in Jay (–10.1 percentage points), Tipton (–11.1), Scott (–11.7), Huntington (–12.3), Rush (–13.0), Adams (–13.2), Montgomery (–17.2) and Wabash (–17.4) counties this election from his 2008 totals.
• Doughnut counties. Although he saw greater losses in other traditional GOP counties, Bennett’s support in the heavily-populated Indianapolis suburbs wavered in this election. His support slipped by 10 points in Hamilton County from 2008, by nine in Hendricks County, and by seven in Johnson County. Though he won all of these counties, Bennett clearly underperformed here — and he could’ve used those votes to help close the gap with Ritz.
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  StateImpact

  State superintendent Tony Bennett

  Lake County? Bennett won less than a third of the vote in Gary and many of its suburbs in 2008. But Bennett increased his visibility in the area after the state took over Gary’s Roosevelt High Schooland won 40 percent of the vote this year in Lake County — also, by the way, an active center for charter schools. Silver lining for Bennett?

Many thanks to StateImpact data journalists Jessica Pupovac and Yan Lu for putting together this map.