Color Lane County blue.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Voting patterns in the Nov. 2 election, as revealed in the recently certified precinct-by-precinct results, show familiar contours in Lane County's political landscape. South Eugene is intensely Democratic, the rest of the city less so, and most areas outside Eugene have conservative leanings.

Yet there are anomalies in the results - including the fact that Lane County voters supported liberal candidates, but turned conservative in deciding ballot measures.

Democrats wondering how to find their way back into voters' favor should consult Rep. Peter DeFazio. All 83 of Lane County's precincts voted to give the Democratic incumbent a 10th term in Congress. DeFazio won in all 25 precincts where President George W. Bush defeated John Kerry.

DeFazio received 15,522 more votes than Kerry did in Lane County. Quite a few people voted for the Republican president in the Nov. 2 election, and then marked their ballots for the Democratic congressman - despite the fact that DeFazio's Republican opponent, Jim Feldkamp, was a lock-step Bush loyalist.

DeFazio and Bush have little in common politically, but many voters could support both without having their heads explode. DeFazio has found the key to eternal political life in Oregon's 4th District: He attracted intense support in the strongly Democratic areas of south Eugene, where he won some precincts by margins of 10 to 1, without alienating too many voters in more conservative areas. DeFazio is a partisan Democrat, but he's also willing to break with liberal orthodoxy on such issues as gun control. Above all, he avoids coming across as a slick politician.

Kerry beat Bush in 58 of 83 Lane County precincts and won 59 percent of the vote - a landslide. The Massachusetts senator's main base of support was in Eugene. He won 86.2 percent of the vote in City Council Ward 3, which extends from the Amazon Parkway to City View Street, and 84.2 percent in Ward 1, which includes the University of Oregon area and the Laurel Hill Valley. Kerry won by lesser percentages elsewhere in the city, losing only three of 34 Eugene precincts to Bush. Citywide, Kerry took 68.8 percent of the vote.

Even excluding Eugene, Kerry scored a narrow 50.6 percent win in Lane County. Kerry won in Springfield, Santa Clara, Florence, Coburg, Lowell, Blue River and Oakridge. Bush prevailed in Junction City, Cottage Grove, Creswell, Veneta and Elmira.

DeFazio's resounding win, and Kerry's convincing victory, gives Lane County a deep blue political profile. Yet those same voters approved Ballot Measure 36, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and Measure 37, a law requiring that property owners affected by land use regulations be compensated. Lane County voters also defeated Measure 33, a broadening of Oregon's medical marijuana law, and Measure 34, which would have restricted logging on state forests in northwestern Oregon. Multnomah County - Oregon's Democratic stronghold - voted the other way on all but one of those proposals, siding with Lane County voters by narrowly approving Measure 37.

Measure 36 passed in Eugene City Council Ward 5, the western half of north Eugene, and Ward 6, the Bethel-Danebo area. It failed everywhere else in Eugene, attracting only 16.7 percent of the vote in Ward 3. Citywide, Measure 36 received 39.9 percent of the vote. Outside Eugene, the measure won 62 percent of the vote. Only four of 49 precincts outside Eugene opposed the same-sex marriage ban, and in one the vote was tied. The result was a near tie countywide - Measure 36 passed by 59 votes out of 184,107 cast.

Measure 37 passed in five out of eight City Council wards - only south Eugene Wards 1, 2 and 3 opposed it. That opposition, however, was strong enough to sink the property compensation measure citywide, resulting in a Eugene vote of only 47.4 percent in support of the proposal. But outside Eugene, Measure 37 failed in only one precinct and won 63 percent of the vote. The result was a clear countywide victory, with 55.9 percent of voters in support.

Measures 33 and 34 passed easily in the three south Eugene wards, and failed nearly everywhere else in Eugene and Lane County. The south Eugene vote was enough to give the medical marijuana measure a victory in the city, but the state forest proposal failed citywide. Throughout Lane County, the verdict on both was a resounding no.

For the past two decades or more, Lane County's voting patterns have been characterized by a strong liberal Democratic base in south Eugene, leavened by conservative Republican voters elsewhere. That hasn't changed - though this year, the county as a whole moved toward the Democratic side without a corresponding shift away from conservative responses to ballot measures. Lane County's voters, as an aggregate, make their political decisions one at a time, and their choices in one instance don't necessarily predict how they'll vote in the next.