Advantage: Ficker

Technically speaking, the fate of Robin Ficker’s latest anti-tax charter amendment has not been settled. But we fully expect it will soon become law.

With all precincts counted, Montgomery County’s unofficial results report 169,762 votes in favor of the Ficker Amendment and 169,171 votes against – a margin of 591 votes. That means the vote will come down to absentee and provisional ballots. We believe these ballots will give Ficker a larger margin and thereby seal his victory for the following two reasons:

1. The history of non-precinct voters favors Ficker
In the 2006 General Election, precinct voters favored O’Malley over Ehrlich by 63-36%, Cardin over Steele by 68-31% and Leggett over Floyd by 68-22%. Non-precinct voters, of whom the vast majority were domestic absentee voters, favored O’Malley over Ehrlich by 58-41%, Cardin over Steele by 63-36% and Leggett over Floyd by 64-27%. So in these three races on average, the Republican candidate overperformed by 4.7 points among non-precinct voters when compared to precinct voters. This suggests a small conservative skew that will benefit Ficker.

In the 2004 General Election, precinct voters favored Kerry over Bush by 66-33% and Mikulksi over Pipkin by 72-26%. Non-precinct voters favored Kerry over Bush by 69-29% and Mikulski over Pipkin by 73-24%. So in these two races on average, the Democrat overperformed by 2.6 points among non-precinct voters when compared to precinct voters. This suggests a tiny skew favoring the Democrats, which runs contrary to conventional wisdom. However, another Ficker Amendment appeared on the 2004 ballot which was nearly identical to this year’s amendment. Precinct voters rejected that Ficker proposal by a 59-41 margin. Non-precinct voters rejected it by a 55-45 margin. Ficker outperformed among non-precinct voters by 3.8 points. If that pattern holds this year, Ficker will win.

2. Absentee voters are less likely to have heard anti-Ficker arguments
The anti-Ficker coalition made its case against the amendment in two ways. First, an anti-Ficker mailer went out near the end of last week. Second, MCEA’s Apple Ballot carriers distributed the teachers’ recommendation against the proposal and made a point of telling voters that it originated with Robin Ficker. Absentees may very well have voted prior to receiving the mailer and almost certainly were not exposed to the on-the-ground Apple Ballot.

It will take awhile for the results to come in, but the above data strongly suggests that Robin Ficker has finally triumphed.