MCEA’s Apple Ballot had a lot of success in 2006, beating both the Post and Gazette endorsements on win rate in contested races. What impact did it have specifically on the at-large race?
Last time, incumbent George Leventhal and challengers Marc Elrich and Duchy Trachtenberg were listed on the Apple Ballot. Incumbents Nancy Floreen and Mike Subin and a host of lesser challengers were not.
Here are the vote totals of the above five candidates in 2006.
Leventhal: 52,364
Elrich: 47,574
Trachtenberg: 46,975
Floreen: 44,580
Subin: 38,896
And here are the precinct vote totals for these five candidates. While MCEA does mailers on behalf of its endorsees, the Apple Ballot’s main effectiveness comes from its distribution at polling places.
Leventhal: 46,073
Elrich: 41,778
Trachtenberg: 41,334
Floreen: 38,973
Subin: 34,066
The above data illustrates that Leventhal finished first by a comfortable margin, Elrich and Trachtenberg were virtually tied after him, and Floreen trailed those three but beat Subin significantly. The Apple Ballot was just one factor in this performance, but it was a factor. Consider that the Post endorsed Leventhal, Floreen, Subin and Bo Newsome while the Gazette endorsed Floreen, Subin, Newsome and Reggie Felton.
The key to understanding the Apple Ballot is knowing that is not equally effective in all areas of the county. To gauge its effectiveness, we calculated the combined vote totals of its three at-large endorsees – Leventhal, Elrich and Trachtenberg. They ran three very different campaigns. Leventhal stuck to the same pro-growth positions that he had as a member of the 2002 End Gridlock team and had lots of money. Elrich and Trachtenberg ran on platforms of limiting development. Elrich had lots of volunteers and little money. Trachtenberg had lots of money and few volunteers. The only thing that all three shared was their support by many labor unions, and more specifically, presence on the Apple Ballot. We calculated their combined votes as a percentage of all at-large votes cast to serve as a proxy for Apple influence. This is an admittedly imperfect statistic, but it does produce some interesting results.
Following are the combined precinct vote percentage of the Apple at-large candidates by Congressional District, State Legislative District, Council District and locality.
Overall, Leventhal, Elrich and Trachtenberg combined to receive 44.0% of all votes for at-large candidates cast at polling places, but there are WIDE disparities across the county. The Apple’s popularity was greatest in Downcounty areas like Takoma Park (58.3% of at-large votes), Downtown Silver Spring (48.9%), Kensington (47.7%), Bethesda (46.0%) Chevy Chase (45.6%) and Potomac (45.2%). These are mostly politically liberal areas where education is usually the number one issue.
Takoma Park is an outlier because of the popularity of former City Council Member Marc Elrich, who was a strong supporter of Trachtenberg in 2006 as well as today. (If Vladimir Putin ran on a slate with Elrich, he would win in Takoma Park). What makes Takoma Park’s respect for the Apple in the at-large race even more remarkable is that the city voted to eject Apple-endorsed Senator Ida Ruben in favor of Jamie Raskin even as it led MoCo in Apple fealty at the county level.
The Apple was weakest in Upcounty areas like Burtonsville (37.0%), Clarksburg (37.7%), Germantown (37.8%), Laytonsville (38.5%), Poolesville (39.6%), Montgomery Village (39.7%) and Damascus (39.8%). Non-coincidentally, Nancy Floreen and Mike Subin tended to perform well in these areas. Upcounty is more politically moderate than Downcounty and a few precincts even lean to the right. This should be cautionary information for MCEA’s efforts to elect Craig Rice to Council District 2.
The Apple’s skewed success rate is going to have an impact on the 2010 at-large race. We’ll explore that further as we analyze the individual candidates later in the series.
Tomorrow, we’ll present the overall precinct results for the four at-large winners in 2006 as well as Mike Subin.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Council At-Large Geography, Part Three
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7 comments:
Adam:
Interesting post. Great research but there is no way you can come to any conclusion from the data you present.
Five problems: 1) cause & effect; 2) proof that education was the determining factor in a voter's decision (closely related to #1); 3) the impact of provisional ballots on the 2006 primary in MoCo; 4) which, if any candidates, worked in concert. The coordination can be with other county candidates or state ones; and 5) the political base of those running.
In reverse order:
#5 Marc and George share the same geographic base of Takoma Park. Marc might be stronger in TP but George is very strong there too. (George was Ida Ruben's strongest ally in 2006.) Mike Subin lives in Lakelands in the city of limits of Gaithersburg. He always ran well upcounty. You need to adjust your conclusions for these factors.
#4: Duchy and Marc worked well in 2006. But Ike was a supporter of Ida Ruben, Mike Subin, Duchy and Marc among others. Politics makes for strange bedfellows and you need to adjust your conclusions to candidates that worked in concert.
As a corollary, you can have precinct chairs who while neutral outside of the voting site but have clear favorites that are conveyed to their friends via listservs and person-to-person contact.
#3. The election screw up of 2006 is completely ignored. Takoma Park did not get their proper voting materials until around 9am. I was in Wheaton in 2006 and we got ours around 7:10am but things were not running smoothly until after 8am. Those areas closest to Broome JHS (the site of BoE in 2006) were up and running well first and the borders of MoCo were last. Burtonsville, East County, Poolesville, Olney & Damascus were even later than TP for getting the election keys needed to run the touchscreen machines. Nor did you mention the judges order to keep the polls open beyond 8pm. They did. But the machines did not allow for voting on them after 8pm, so those voters got provisional ballots.
#2. The only person who had county wide polling in 2006 was Steve Silverman. His theme in the final 6 weeks was "sick of traffic: vote Silverman". Ike won so does that mean that MoCo voters don't care about traffic? Using your logic I can claim that. But it would be false.
#1. To make a conclusion you must show a cause and effect. You did not. You recognize that using the candidates endorsed by MCEA is imperfect but that does not allow you grace from making an incorrect conclusion of the electoral data.
Sadly, you did a perfect example of using logic to fit your conclusion. The Apple was not the prime reason Duchy, Marc and George did well downcounty and Mike Subin outperformed Apple endorsed candidates in the upcounty.
It is also called a specious reasoning.
Ice cream consumption peaks before crime does. It is consistent year to year but one can't conclude that ice cream consumption causes crime.
And you can't conclude that the Apple ballot is weaker upcounty than it is downcounty based on how their endorsed candidates performed WITHOUT isolating the factors I mentioned.
Give credit to MCEA, they had only three losses in the primary: Ruben (20th), Berry (19th) and James (17th) and two losses in the general.
All:
Sorry about that. I kept getting messages saying that the file was too big. So I cut and pasted my comments into three parts. But the original post went through.
I will learn Blogger sooner or later.
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