Here’s a chart with an overall summary of the results. The top 4 candidates are elected.
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
– These percent results are different from what is published by the Boston Election Department and the newspapers. The way the city does it is: 100 voters cast 300 votes (a voter can vote for up to 4 candidates) for various candidates. Candidate X gets 30 votes. The city calculates it as Candidate X got 10% of the vote (30 of 300 votes cast). I calculate it as Candidate X getting 30% of the vote (30 votes from 100 people turning out). My method is the way it gets calculated in all other elections, so it’s much more relevant when comparing with other election results.
– The order for the top 4 candidates stayed the same from the Primary to the General. Connolly beat Murphy by only 346 votes for first place, after beating him by 4,804 votes in the Primary. The only order changes were: Jackson went from 6th to 5th, Gonzalez from 8th to 7th, Kenneally from 5th to 6th, and Bennett from 7th to 8th.
– Pressley had the best improvement (17%) from the Primary to the General. Jackson was next with a 12% jump. Arroyo, Murphy, and Kenneally were next with 7-9% jumps. Connolly, Gonzalez, and Bennett were up only 2-4%.
As in the past few elections, the 4th place finisher gets in the high-30%s of the vote. That seems to be the magic number to win.
Results by Neighborhood:
Here’s a link to the candidate results by neighborhood:
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
As usual, white candidates do best in the whitest neighborhoods and non-white candidates do best in white-liberal and non-white neighborhoods. The % white voting-age-population (from the 2000 Census) of the neighborhood is included in every chart to make this clear. So it’s often the relative turnout of each neighborhood that plays a major role in the final results.
You can look at the chart at the link above to see all the details. The precinct-by-precinct results are also available at a link below. Here are some general observations:
* Connolly’s best results (46% citywide) came from West Roxbury (66% – his home neighborhood), Charlestown (63%), southern-white Dorchester (60%). His worst results came from Roxbury, Grove Hall, Blue Hill Ave. / Washington St. Corridor (17% – 19%). He also got mid-50s% in white neighborhoods like West End, Brighton, Beacon Hill, and Back Bay.
* Murphy’s best results (46% citywide) came from Readville (69%), south-white Dorchester (63%) and South Boston (61%). He did worst non-white neighborhoods like Roxbury, non-white parts of Dorchester (25% – 28%). Murphy did a lot better than Connolly in these non-white neighborhoods.
* Arroyo’s best results (41% citywide) came from Jamaica Plain (67%), Fenway (52%), Roxbury (51%), and Grove Hall (50%). He did worst in South Boston (20%), southern-white Dorchester (27%) and Charlestown (28%).
* Pressley’s best results (38% citywide) came from Melville/Ashmont (58%), Mattapan (54%), Roxbury (50%), Blue Hill Ave. / Washington St. Corridor (50%). She did worst in East Boston (15%), South Boston (18%), Readville (20%), and Charlestown (23%).
* Jackon’s best results (27% citywide) came from Roxbury (56%), Mattapan (53%), non-white parts of Dorchester (51% – 56%). He did worst in South Boston (9%), East Boston (10%), Readville (11%), and Charlestown (12%).
* Kenneally’s best results (22% citywide) came from West Roxbury (44%), East Boston (43%), and South Boston (40%). He did worst in Mattapan, Roxbury, and non-white parts of Dorchester (5% – 9%).
* Gonzalez’ best results (16% citywide) came from about Jamaica Plain (28%), Mission Hill (26%), and Hyde Park (25%). He did worst in Charlestown (9%), South Boston (9%), West Roxbury (10%), and southern-white Dorchester (10%).
* Bennett’s best results (15% citywide) came from West End (39%), South Boston (29%), Charlestown (27%) and the North End (27%). He did worst in Jamaica Plain (8%) and least-white neighborhoods like Roxubry, Mattapan, non-white Dorchester (5% – 8%).
Candidate Result Changes from 2009 Primary to 2009 General:
Here’s a link to a chart showing how each candidate’s vote changed from the Primary to the General:
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
– Example: if a candidate went from 30% in the Primary to 40% in the General, there was a 10 percentage point increase. For the 8 candidates, the overall increases ranged from +2 points to +17 points. For individual neighborhoods, candidate results varied from -4 points to +31 points.
– The non-white candidates gained a lot more votes than the white candidates in the General vs. the Primary (+17, +12, +9, and +4 points for non-white candidates vs. +9, +6, +2, and +2 points for the white candidates). This is the “liberal /non-white surge” that we often see. It’s complicated to compare it to other years since there have typically been only 1 or 2 non-white candidates in the general.
– Some highlights:
* Pressley had big gains in Mattapan (31 points), non-white parts of Dorchester (22 – 25 points), Roxbury (23 points). She also had big gains in neighborhoods like Jamaica Plain, Allston, Brighton, and Hyde Park (21 – 22 points).
* Jackson had gains of 18 – 25 points in very non-white neighborhoods.
* I’d guess that the Jackson and Pressley gains were due to them having low name recognition in the primary as first-time candidates.
* Arroyo Jr. started out with better name recognition (thanks to Arroyo Sr.), so he did far better in the primary, and still had a decent 9 point gain in the General.
* Murphy’s 9 point gain is somewhat surprising since he started with good name recognition as a 12 year incumbent city councilor. His gains were highest in the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway and West End (14 – 16 points). He also had a good gain in Mattapan (14 points). He had the lowest gains in the white-conservative-voting neighborhoods. I don’t have a great explanation for this.
* Of the 7 candidates who didn’t make it to the General, the 2 white candidates got 9,780 votes, and the 5 non-white candidates got 29,994 votes. So there were a lot more potential votes going to the remaining non-white candidates.
* For lots of reasons, the power of incumbency made it hard for the 2 incumbents, Connolly and Murphy, to lose under any turnout scenario.
Votes per Ballot (aka – bullet voting):
– Here’s a link to the VOTES PER BALLOT tab with a chart that shows the average # of city council candidates (upto 4) that a voter voted for, broken down by neighborhood. Using only one of your four votes is referred to as “bullet voting”.
http://spreadsheets.google.com…
– A voter casts one ballot and can vote for up to 4 city council candidates in the at-large race. In the past 10-20 years, voters typically average around 3 of their votes per ballot.
– In the General, voters used an average of 2.5 votes per ballot. This is up from 2.4 votes per ballot in the primary. The neighborhood pattern in the General is similar to that in the Primary, where the whitest neighborhoods are a few tenths of a vote above the city average and th
e least-white neighborhoods are a few tenths of a vote below the city average. The white-liberal-voting neighborhoods are also a few tenths above the city-wide average.
– Bullet voting actually works against non-white neighborhoods’ clout. There are less votes per voter coming out of those neighborhoods, compared to the whitest neighborhoods. Given that there were 4 strong non-white candidates, there was no good reason for this to happen. A neighborhood using an average of 2.3 votes per voter vs. a neighborhood using an average of 2.7 votes per voter has the same affect as decreasing the turnout by 15% (.4 divided by 2.7), or for example, reducing a turnout of 40% to effectively to 35%.
Strategy for future City Council candidates:
The opportunity is there for future open seats to be won by liberal / non-white candidates. The winning strategy for them is:
* Lots of quality candidates producing very-contested elections that generate a high city-wide turnout.
* Concentrate campaign resources in the liberal-voting / non-white base to generate high name recognition.
* Discourage bullet voting. Encourage voters to use 3 or 4 of their 4 votes per ballot.
* Ongoing demographic and voter registration changes in the city are shrinking the white-conservative base.
* High-turnout elections in even-year state and federal elections increase the pool of frequent voters.
Get all the raw data here:
– 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…
– Here are the raw results from the Boston Election Department, as of 11/4/2009:
http://www.cityofboston.gov/el…
Thanks for the lesson on bullet voting. And the data to prove it. I’ll never do it again.
Look, vote for all the candidates (up to four!) who earn your vote. Don’t feel compelled to use votes just because they exist. There’s plenty of room for strategy in using 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 of your four votes.
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p>If you feel really worried about “votes per neighborhood”, then bring someone out to vote who wouldn’t have voted otherwise — you’ll increase the number of votes in your neighborhood without throwing strategy out the window (so long as the person you bring to vote shares your political views!)
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p>This lesson is relevant though: Discourage bullet voting. Encourage voters to use 3 or 4 of their 4 votes per ballot.
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p>The best way to do this: slates. Two, three, or four candidates who share similar visions, but perhaps have different foci, voter bases, geographic bases, etc would do well to team up — sharing their spotlights, their coverage, their canvassing, etc. They get wider coverage and far more spillover votes that way.
right. I mean correct. Thanks
Given a comparatively small base, bullets can be effective as in Arroyo Sr.’s second race: it was one of the tactical premises behind “Team Unity”. If coordinated bullet voting is combined with systematic and comprehensive get-out-the-vote operations, it works quite well.
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p>It does, however depend upon accurate voter turnout projections and competent field operations.
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p>”Liberal-voting/non-white base” is sometimes a contradiction in terms, as in Tuesday’s Mayoral election. Yoon’s supporters in places like Jamaica Plain reinforced the Mayor’s support in black and Latino precincts.
Bullet voting may be a good for an individual candidate, but …. “My take away- while candidates may want “bullet” votes it’s not good for communities. Bullet voting also encourages candidates to go it alone when I think we need to change our political culture and encourage more collaboration, coalition and slates. Thanks for the analysis Bob.”
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p>- An excellent comment from my friend, Mike Fogelberg:
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p>Also, the Floon conservative-liberal alliance threw a wrench into predictable voting patterns – it helped them in the white-liberal neighborhoods and hurt them in the white-conservative neighborhoods.
I think when Felix Sr. was running, it may have made sense for progressives to “bullet” vote to ensure at least one good at large councilor. This year, there were more “progressive” candidate options and more seats up for grabs, along with the continually changing demographics. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2011 if the incumbents are not seriously challenged and can play for “position”, coaxing bullet votes in an effort to lead the field.
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p>But that’s a ways off, thankfully.
The Yoon component was so despised, for example in Chinatown (Ward 3, Pct 8), the Mayor beat Flaherty two to one.
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p>The hostility of the Dominican community in J.P. towards the organized white left is a political fact of life, given their battles over Hyde and Jackson Square development.
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p>A similar dynamic applies in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan, limited only in Roxbury Highlands.
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p>What did happen was that black and Latino hostility to Floon freed the Mayor to concentrate his resources in order to contain Flaherty in Dorchester, limit his outreach in West Roxbury, and obliterate him in Hyde Park, while conceding J.P. and Back Bay.
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p>There was next to no real political effort by Menino in black and Latino neighborhoods. Flaherty an Yoon had the only real presence there, and were consistently rejected.
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p>You also might want to consider cross-referencing the Arroyo and Pressley organizational support with Menino’s endorsers.
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p>Floon never had a chance.
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p>And the voting patterns were totally predictable.
I do think we make some broad assumptions about bullet voting. Namely: that it is the motivation of voters. I think there are some parts of Boston that require additional education around voting. I can’t tell you how many times over the last few months I heard ‘I can’t vote for candidate X in the council race, because I’m already supporting candidate Y.’
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p>For whatever reason, this seems to be more prevalent in the communities of color, but voter education is needed everywhere.
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p>As to explaining the reason for Murphy’s huge gains, especially as compared to Connolly’s, I would love for someone to do some kind of numbers crunching around what gains you get from being #1 on the ballot in a crowded field. Connolly’s incredible domination in the preliminary, as the #1 candidate on the ballot, and then Murphy’s 9% jump in the general, also as #1 (compared to Connolly’s 3% increase at #6 on the ballot), makes me curious as to the real impact that might have.
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p>Of course none of that explains Pressley’s 17% improvement (#8 on the ballot), or Tito’s 12% (#4), which seem more related to post-prelim name recognition.
Someone else also suggested ballot order was a big factor in Murphy’s gains from primary to general. If that were true, one might expect his gains to be relatively uniform across neighborhoods, which was not the case. One could argue that some neighborhoods are more influenced than others by ballot order (the downtown white neighborhoods in Murphy’s case had the biggest jumps), which doesn’t make too much sense to me.
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p>Of course, one could attribute it to a combination of good strategy by Murphy and bad strategy by Connolly between the primary and general.
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p>On the Jackson and Pressley gains, I’d say that many voters choose councilors based on simple identifications – by race/ethnicity, by neighborhood, by gender (for female candidates), and/or a vague sense of political leaning (since there’s really no party affiliation in local elections). Especially when the big draw is the mayor’s race and the city council races are an afterthought to many.
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p>I would have recommended the Jackson and Pressley strategy to make a simple race connection in the African-American neighborhoods. I’d guess that was their strategy, since they got huge gains there.
Interesting.
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p>Well let me throw this random thought at you.
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p>Of the 8 neighborhoods where Murphy had the biggest improvement, four of them are in Council District 8 (Ross). Any thoughts? Did having a district race there (not much of a race, but a race nonetheless) for the final but not the prelim jolt the numbers a bit?
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p>The improvement in Mattapan is the one has has me scratching my head.