2009 BOSTON ELECTION RESULTS
Here is my first take on the results of the turnout and Mayor’s race in the Boston 2009 general election. I summarize the results from a neighborhood perspective, not by wards, since almost everyone can identify with a neighborhood name more easily than a ward number.
The Turnout:
Here’s a link to the turnout counts and rates by neighborhood.
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
– The overall turnout was 111K voters. This is 39% of active voters and 31% of all voters (active + inactive). This is a 29K increase (36%) over the 2009 Primary, and a 14K increase (14%) over the 2005 General.
– Turnout had the usual distribution of whiter neighborhoods turning out better than liberal-voting and non-white neighborhoods. Turnout was highest in Readville (62%), southern-white Dorchester (56%), and West Roxbury (54%). Turnout was lowest in Allston (21%), Fenway (25%), and Back Bay (27%).
– There was a 10 percentage point increase in turnout from the Primary to the General (39% vs. 28%). The increase was larger in the whitest neighborhoods. The biggest increases were in Readville (+17 points) ,West Roxbury (+15 points), and Charlestown, Beacon Hill, southern-white Dorchester (all +13 points). The lowest increases were in Chinatown(+5 points), Allston (+6 points), and Brighton, Grove Hall (+8 points).
* This is somewhat surprising, since there is generally a “liberal/non-white surge” in the General compared to the Primary. I expected the increases in the white-liberal and non-white neighborhoods to be relatively larger. Maybe Flaherty was better at turning out his base here, and/or maybe Menino was trying to pull out more votes in the white neighborhoods???
* The South Boston (Flaherty’s home) change was 10 percentage points. The Readville (Menino’s home) was 17 points. Perhaps some South Boston voters were not too excited by the Flaherty-Yoon alliance???
– This was the most contested mayor’s race in Boston since 1993, when Menino was elected to an open seat after Ray Flynn left. The turnout was 112K in the primary and 118K in the general.
The Mayor’s Race:
Here’s a link to the mayoral candidate results by neighborhood.
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
– Menino beats Flaherty 57% to 42%, a gap of 15 points. The gap in the primary was 26 points (50% vs. 24%). So Flaherty closed the gap by 12 points. I’ll explain below how did he do that.
– Menino did best in his home turf of Hyde Park and Readville with 75% of the vote. He also did well in the least-white neighborhoods like Mattapan and parts of Dorchester (90+% non-white population) with 70% – 75% of the votes there. He also did well in large neighborhoods like Roxbury (67%), Roslindale (62%), East Boston (60%), West Roxbury (58%),
– Flaherty was strongest in the whitest neighborhoods. Outside of South Boston (69%), he got 50% – 55% of the vote in Charlestown, and the white parts of Dorchester. He got less than 20% – 30% in the least-white neighborhoods. He also did very well in the white, liberal-voting neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, South End, Back Bay, and Beacon Hill with 50% – 55% of the vote.
So what happened between the Primary and the General? Where did the Yoon votes go?
* Menino gained 6.6 percentage points (57% vs. 50%) while Flaherty gained 18.3 percentage points (42% vs. 24%) in the General vs. Primary. So Flaherty improved by 12 percentage points more than Menino city-wide.
* The best increases for Flaherty vs. Menino came from white-liberal voting neighborhoods like Fenway (26 points), Jamaica Plain (23 points), Allston / Back Bay (22 points), Beacon Hill (20 points), and South End (18%). These neighborhoods are were Yoon did best in the Primary.
* The worst improvements for Flaherty vs. Menino came from his Menino’s home neighborhood – Readville (0 points) and Hyde Park (4 points), and also West Roxbury (2 points), South Boston (2 points), and southern-white Dorchester (4 points).
* The non-white neighborhoods came out in the middle for Flaherty vs. Menino, in the 10 – 16 point range.
So it looks like the Flaherty-Yoon ticket idea had the result of:
* Boosting Flaherty in the white-liberal-voting neighborhoods by giving better him “liberal credentials”.
* Didn’t make much difference in the non-white neighborhoods.
* Hurting Flaherty in the white-conservative-voting neighborhoods.
* The 29K new voters in the General vs. Primary came somewhat more from white-conservative-voting neighborhoods than I expected. If I had to guess, I’d say it was the Menino machine pulling out voters there, not the Flaherty machine. Any insiders know the strategy?
* All make sense??
Notes:
– % Turnouts based on active voter count unless otherwise noted.
– Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding issues.
– In the interest of making public records more public and elections more transparent, here’s a link to the raw precinct results in a spreadsheet format.
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
Couple of thoughts:
<
p>One thing we caught a bit of in calling people who didn’t vote in the prelim is that some people who generally liked Tom Menino and were positive about the direction the city was going in did not vote in the prelim, but planned on voting in the final once his opponent was chosen, so the assumption that a “larger” turnout would hurt the incumbent was softened by this. Flaherty’s voters in South Boston “needed” to come out in the prelim, as it turns out, given the small margin between he and Yoon, and traditionally, Southie voters vote in prelims at a higher rate than most neighborhoods.
<
p>My guess is also that “baby boomers” who voted for Yoon were more likely to give Menino consideration in the final than younger voters, preventing a total shift of votes from Yoon to Flaherty. Those progressives who supported Menino from the start or joined post-prelim reflected people who had interacted with him for many years and conversely, not been on the same side of the fence as the more conservative Flaherty on very many issues over the course of his career. Some younger voters were more accepting of the “Floon” alliance on face value (so to speak), they’re more like “us” (although the Menino campaign recruited dozens of interns from local colleges, pretty much a first for his campaigns, and major kudos to his campaign manager Emily Nowlin for doing so).
<
p>So in the end, on a ward by ward basis, Flaherty added Ward 5 (Beacon Hill/Back Bay/West Fens by 72 votes) to his previous wins in Wards 2 (Charlestown), 6 and 7 (South Boston). His margin in W5 was tempered by Menino wins in precinct 1 (Bay Village) and 10 (Kenmore Square).
<
p>And even in more progressive areas, there were few blowouts for Flaherty, the South End went for Menino, the Fenway split, Menino picked up a JP precinct he didn’t win in the prelim (19-8) and lost one narrowly that he won before (Pondside). Flaherty’s biggest margin in Ward 19 was 110 votes in precinct one (Hyde Sq), but Menino won by 148 votes in precinct two (Jamaica Hills).
<
p>Would Sam Yoon have done better in the final? He surpirsed some by coming within a handful of votes per precinct of getting into the final, with less money and a less defined geographic base. My view is probably not. It was easier for Flaherty to reposition himself for getting “progressive” votes as part of a “youthful, time for a change” ticket than it would have been for Yoon to pull in more conservative Southie/Charlestown votes, even with a Flaherty endorsement.
<
p>In the end, Menino was positioned in the center of Boston politics, picking up enough progressive votes for his stands on gay rights and women’s issues (as well as a range of issues such as housing and homelessness), picking up many votes in his more moderate Hyde Park/West Roxbury base, and picking up many votes in the communities of color, African Americans, Latinos, Haitians, etc.
<
p>Be interested in hesring other people’s takes on this. Matt O’Malley also did a nice analysis in the prelim, though he may be a bit busy with Senate business at this point
Well thought out. And Howard, I’m never too busy for some number crunching: http://mattomalley.blogspot.co…
<
p>Congrats to you and Team Menino for a huge win in a tough electoral climate.
And thank you for your help in particular in your work with Mass Equality. You were taken from us far too soon – 🙂
Proclaiming that Flaherty “sold his soul to the devil” by partnering with Yoon. He called Yoon a “whacko, socialist moonbat” or some such thing. I had to listen to this clown for like three hours, and the candidate I was helping out didn’t even get elected. Tough day. 🙁
Just gibberish, we had a good crew at my poll, very respectful, lots of handshakes at end of day as most worked the polls for just about the whole day, they deserved respect as did you.
“Conservative” is somewhat inaccurate description of neighborhoods such as South Boston and West Roxbury. Labor-liberal-populist would be more precise. Those neighborhoods (along with the various black and Latino communities) are, however, strongly anti-progressive.
<
p>It’s difficult to overstate the sheer hostility that voters in these communities have towards Yoon, whatever their differences with each other.
<
p>As a result the overt Menino operation could concentrate on staunching the bleeding in West Roxbury and the non-Neponset sections of white and Asian Dorchester.
<
p>Finally, the opposition of the Firemen’s Union was a gift from heaven, because it enabled the Mayor to sign a nonaggression pact with the Patrolman’s Union, which hates the Firemen. Flaherty was left with no municipal union support (many individual firemen defected from the union and supported Menino).
<
p>The Floon effort was nothing more than an outreach and damage control mechanism for the Mayor.