How Montco voted: 12 Republicans, 8 Democrats and nearly all incumbents

One week ago, polls were about to close across the Commonwealth. Hopefully you've all had sufficient time to recover from election fatigue, because now I bring you a breakdown of How Montco Voted.

Montco voters sent all but three incumbents -- Gov. Tom Corbett, Rep. LeAnna Washington (who lost primary re-election and resigned from office amid a corruption case), and Rep. Mark Painter -- back to Harrisburg. Although the county leans Democratic in terms of voter registration, it sent 12 Republican legislators to Harrisburg and D.C., compared with 8 Democratic legislators.

Montgomery County districts were already among the state's most heavily gerrymandered, and became more so in this election with the implementation of the 2012 redistricting lines.

Turnout countywide was 48%. That's 2 percentage points lower than the previous gubernatorial election, but nearly three times higher than the May primary, which due to aforementioned gerrymandering was arguably more important for Montco in this election cycle. Springfield, Upper Dublin and Upper Salford topped the list with higher than 55% turnout. Norristown, Pottstown and Bridgeport came in last, with 32%, 33% and 35% turnout, respectively.

Starting at the top of the ballot, Montgomery County went 60% in Tom Wolf's favor. That's a strong improvement for Democrats in a county that only narrowly favored Corbett's opponent in 2010. The northwest portion of the county went for Corbett, the south and east portions for Wolf. There were some tiny exceptions, though. Trappe and Bryn Athyn were islands of red in a sea of Wolf territory, and Red Hill/Pennsburg/East Greenville were an island of blue surrounded by Corbett territory.

Like the rest of the state, Montco favored congressional incumbents -- and sided with the winner in every race. Chaka Fattah (D) won 61% of the vote, Pat Meehan (R) won 59%, and Mike Fitzpatrick (R) won 67%.

In races for open seats, Republican Ryan Costello won 55% of the vote over Democrat Manan Trivedi, who had carried in the county in 2010 but lost the district overall to incumbent Jim Gerlach. Gerlach opted not to run for re-election this year.

In the 13th Congressional District -- the seat Allyson Schwartz gave up in order to run for governor, only to lose the Democratic nomination to Wolf -- Democrat Brendan Boyle won 62% of the vote. That will open up Boyle's seat in the state House of Representatives, but that's a topic I'll leave for a future post.

In the 4th Senate District -- previously occupied by Sen. LeAnna Washington, who lost her primary re-election bid in May and resigned Oct. 31 after pleading guilty in a corruption case -- Democrat Art Haywood won 66% of the Montco vote over Republican Robin Gilchrist. Although Haywood is from Montgomery County, currently serving as a Cheltenham Township commissioner, he pulled in even higher margins in the Philadelphia portion of the district, winning 81% of the vote overall.

Elsewhere in the county, Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R) won 62%, Sen. Bob Mensch (R) won 59%, and Sen. John Rafferty (R) won 61% of the vote.

Incumbents -- only half of whom even faced a challenger -- nearly swept the House as well, with Rep. Bob Godshall (R) bringing in 63%, Rep. Kate Harper (R) 61%, Rep. Justin Simmons (R) 60%, Rep. Mary Jo Daley (D) 62%, Rep. Mike Vereb (R) 64%, Rep. Steve McCarter (D) 73%, Rep. Warren Kampf (R) 57%, Rep. Greg Vitali (D) 74%, and Rep. Pam DeLissio (D) 73%.

The one exception was the 146th District, where voters favored Republican Thomas Quigley 52% over Democratic incumbent Mark Painter.

OK, I know, there were no countywide races on the November ballot. But the county's Voter Services Office was in something of its own trial period Tuesday night, under the leadership of a new agency director and debuting a new election-returns website that was heralded as a jump to the modern age.

The site, electionresults.montcopa.org, worked mostly as advertised, showing results on a map, with municipalities shifting from gray to red and blue as the votes were tallied Tuesday night. The hover feature worked well, showing voter turnout and candidate results for each municipality without having to click back and forth. It is easier to navigate, and to drill down by municipality, ward and precinct to see exactly how many votes came in for each candidate.

The mobile site was slow to load on Election Night, but that's to be expected for graphics-heavy sites. Today, the desktop site is still a little glitchy, often returning to the governor's race page when you click on other races. The ability to "export" results as a PDF is nice, but Excel would be much nicer. It was a smart move to give users the option of the new site or the old one, and the county may want to keep offering that option for a few more election cycles.

Overall, there are some glitches still to be worked out, but compared to the previous site -- and endless scrolling page of names and numbers -- it's a vast improvement.