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If you’re still interested in the recent city election, I’d suggest your read the last piece published in this space,”The November 6 Election — What Happened?” if you haven’t already. That will allow you to see if those amateur analyses (guesses) will be contradicted by this article.

Since then, I’ve tried to dig into precinct totals to see if they give a different picture, and I was surprised to find no big change from the original conclusions, mainly that: 1) More Republican voters went to the polls, 2) A massive split ticket voting by those voters put Sally Hutton back in the mayor’s office, and 3) A large part of that split ticket voting stopped at the mayoralty level, rather than extending to the only other competitive offices — the council-at-large positions — where more straight party voting put all three candidates of the same party in office. By comparison, at the last election in 2003, split ticket voting of Republicans and Independents put two Democrats (Glover and Klose) into office as council-at-large winners. This time, they both lost due to fewer split ticket votes while, at the same time, Sally won by nearly 1,000 votes due largely to Republican and Independent voters (she won by only 141 votes last time). I should add that further examination of precinct results indicates that the council-at-large Democrat losses were also due to the fact that not enough Democrat voters went to the polls.

Digging Into The Precincts

Let’s look at the big picture first, then go on to the precinct level for comparisons, understanding that all of this won’t change the election outcome but is offered for the idle amusement of political junkies.

In the first place, did you notice — before and after the election — how everybody was praising Wayne County’s pioneering innovation of reducing the poling places from 30-some to only four and extending the voting for a whole week before the official election day of Nov. 6? There seemed to be general agreement that it would bring a lot more voters out this election. Sorry –No! There were 737 fewer voters this election than in 2003. Why? That’s where the guessing begins. Maybe the drop happened despite the reduction in voting locations and the weeklong balloting. Or maybe it was because the top of the ticket competition was less intense than it was between Sally Hutton and Shelley Miller. Or maybe you go along with the state Democratic position that requiring official identification documents intimidates older and low income people. Also, throw in any objections to removing all polling places from neighborhoods where some folks always walked there to vote.

Ah! But don’t forget the registration count. There were 250 fewer people registered to vote this time than last. In 2003, both parties went all-out to increase registration, raising the total by 2,183 over 1999, which caused both voting totals and percentage of the electorate to rise, increasing total votes by 2,671 and percentage from 26.71% to 29.69%. This time, only 7,438 votes were cast (down 737) and the proportion of the registered voters (even though lower) dropped to 27.26%.

How About Straight Party Voting?

Straight party voting trends are always interesting to watch, usually reflecting the level of party activity in adding new registrations, because new voters tend to vote straight tickets. Last time, there was a big increase for both parties. The Republicans added 639 new registrations, or a 67% increase, while Democrats piled-on with a whopping 1,228 increase, or 168% more. One characteristic of straight party voting, at least in Richmond, is that Democrats regularly cast more straight party votes than Republicans, showing a consistent difference for the last three elections of approximately 55% to 45%. Or you can state the same facts by saying that Republicans split their tickets more often than Democrats.

Comparing The Two Strongholds

Now, we focus the microscope on a few precincts for more guidance — the seven strongest Democratic and seven strongest Republican precincts in the city. The Democratic ones are all in the central city and the Republican ones are in the far eastside plus the Crestdale neighborhood. Year after year, these show strong majorities for one or the other.

Going to the registered voters column first, we see that the strong Democratic precincts had 157 fewer registered voters than in 2003 and the strong Republican precincts had 145 more! Aha! There’s the missing link. But the important question is: What effect did this have on votes cast? Both groups lost voters in these precincts, but while the Democratic precincts went down 128 votes, the Republican ones dropped only 58. As portions of different totals, that meant that the Democrat drop equalled 10.6% while the Republican drop was only 2.3%. In other words, while these strongest precincts of both parties each lost voters, the Republicans lost much less percentage-wise. A 10% drop in votes in their strongest precincts undoubtedly hurt the Democrats.

What Difference Does It Make?

Let’s play a “What If?” game. That is, would it have made any difference if any of the figures cited above were changed? We have already seen, by inference, that it looks as though the Republicans got more of their “party loyalists” to the polls. There are different ways to measure this voter block because, after all, this is a secret election and no exit interviews were conducted. One way to measure (guess) in this election is to go to the contested council-at-large voting and compare the vote totals of the lowest vote getters of each party, making a presumption that these are the totals of the party loyalists, and candidates above them are the recipients to some degree of split ballots.

Taking this tack, we find that Republican Bob Goodwin came in with a total of 3493, compared to Democrat Vicki Meek’s 2947, going in with what might be called a party advantage of 546 votes. Any Democrat running for council-at-large would have to exceed Goodwin’s going-in advantage of 546 votes to be elected. And the Democrats were not able to do that. Al Glover, the top voter-getter on the Democrat side, came close, within 43 votes of overcoming that advantage, but the result was that all three Republican candidates, including Goodwin, Phil Quinn and Diane Pappin, were elected.

Now, let’s play the “What If?” game by going back to our seven strongest Democratic precincts, comparing it first with straight party voting. As mentioned above, Democrats have a record of a 55-45 edge in straight party balloting, BUT in their strongest precincts, the edge is 75% to 25%. Comparing that with Glover’s 43-vote loss, he could have passed Goodwin if the party had delivered 57 more voters — guaranteed. Even something less than 57 would probably do it, because if they were party-delivered voters, the chances are very good that, even if not straight party voters, some of them would vote for one or more of the Democratic council-at-large candidates, including Glover. So in making another projection (guess), it looks as though about 50 more Democrat votes in those seven precincts would have changed the results (not including any similar votes in all other precincts). Gil Klose would have had a harder job topping that hurdle, being 351 votes behind Phil Quinn, he would have needed about 425 more Democratic votes to guarantee a win.

* * *

So there you are. Enough already. Those of you who read all this are now experts (sort of) in how it all happened.

From now on, we look forward to hoping those persons elected step up to provide the leadership we need for at least the next four years.

Good luck, leaders! Let’s see what you can do.

–Vic Jose

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Vic Jose :: Nov.24.2007 :: Uncategorized ::

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