Election 2009 Maps: Chapel Hill

Mark K carried early voting by 106 votes, which was almost exactly his margin.  Four precincts had 40+% of their votes cast early, all of them had dorms in them. Country Club topped the list at 54%. Seven precincts had less than 20% early voters.

Council-member-Ed is different from neighbor-Ed. Council-member-Ed brings specific and valuable expertise to the council table. I wouldn't characterize Durham County CH residents as ungrateful. I would say that some might have data points that the rest of the town doesn't.  As for minority representation on the council. There's a couple of ways of doing this. Having some council representation voted on by precincts with a couple of at-large seats is one way. My husband has a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics so I was asking him about five-way races when people have four votes. He pointed out that each electoral voting design will produce certain biases none of which are inherently good or bad. For instance, another way to get minority representation on the council is to do exactly what accidentally happened this last time. Give people four votes for five seats. In that scenario, it's very likely that the person who would have come in first in a five-vote/five-seat ballot to come in second in a four-vote/five-seat ballot. (If I'm not mistaken, PPP was predicting that Ed Harrison would come in first, but in reality he came in a close second, although admittedly the races were too close to call.) The four-vote/five-seat design also makes it easier for a minority (and by that I mean a VOTING minority block) to get elected to that 5th seat. This is a very interesting question. With all at-large one-vote-for-one-seat voting, it makes it more likely that minority representation on the council will come about by council appointment.   

Gem of a post. How did you become so enlightened?Just think... if the other 48% of the electorate had your brains (what a bunch of morons!) Mark and company could be enjoying healthcare benefits for life. 

The self-ascribed progressives, those open minded individuals who think they are the only ones who care about the environment and social services, labelled everyone who didn't share their friendships as conservative. Even worse, I heard "the others" called liars over and over again with no explanations. The "If you're not one of us, your against us" worked with some and put off others (myself included). The whole campaign season, for both towns, reminded me of movies and books I've read from the 1950s and 60s about backroom politics and good ole boy networks. The faces and demographic profiles of the individuals may be different, but the methods were the same. Nothing was transparent, and who you affiliate with took precedence over everything else. And yet over and over the battle cry of "we're the progressives" was proclaimed with great pride. The status quo developed a couple of chinks. We'll have to see where it goes from here. 

I think Mark's analysis is pretty accurate. I felt that Mark Kleinschmidt was taking the brunt of people's frustrations with everyone else but him. Not to discount that frustration nor the 48% that voted for Matt Czajkowski, but we also saw the Town Council candidates who seemed most aligned with the current Council do the best. So we have to at least admit that there is some complexity in the electorate right now, not a monolithic groundswell against the current direction.

I used to live in Battle Park, so let me defend my former turf with some numerical considerations.  :)  First, keep in mind that it's the second smallest precinct in the county in terms of population (only Weaver Dairy Satellite, the Carol Woods precinct, is smaller), so it takes a relatively small number of votes to make a difference in which way the precinct swings, especially in a close election.  Twenty people voting the other way would have made the race a tie here.That aside, Battle Park has a very dedicated and hard working Democratic precinct leadership, who probably did a good job of turing people out to vote, and, as we always like to encourage folks to do, turning people out to vote early.  The data supports this.  According to the state board of elections, they had 82 early voters and 6 absentees.  Assuming that everyone who voted on Election Day voted for mayor, that means there were a total of 275 voters from Battle Park, and that those 82 who voted early represented 29.8% of the votes in the precinct - much higher than the Chapel Hill average of about 18%.  My guess (and this is just a guess) is that we'll see when the early voting totals are added back in the Mark indeed won the precinct, or at least didn't lose it so badly.  52 of the 82 early voters (63%) were Democrats, and while I'm not trying to rehash any arguments we've already had here, I think it's clear that most Democrats who voted in the municipal elections voted for Mark.

Sorry, but you missed the townhomes, trailer parks, Rainbow Heights and Parkside (even Larkspur is cheap compared to some in-town neighborhoods).As for fall-out, for those who have never come up MLK past Estes, it's worth a trip. Parkside is about as Middle Class as you can get in a Single Family Detached home. When they were built, most units were sub $200,000. The neighborhood was referred too as "appraisal busters" for the Windsor Park neighborhood across MLK.I think it would be a mistake to assume that income was a determining factor in an election where no candidate got to 50% of the vote.

"Seems very obvious that Matt C. got most of his support from Meadowmont, Southern Village and the neighborhoods along Weaver Dairy." That's ironic, since a major policy plank of his against building more developments like Meadowmont or Southern Village. 

Intersting point about "new urbanism," Ray.  I wonder if it would be accurate to say that newer neighborhoods (and presumably newer residents) were more likely to vote for Matt. I'm thinking of Southern Village, Meadowmont, new developments arond Weaver Dairy Road, for example.

This would also support my theory that the newest residents to Chapel Hill are often the most resistent to change here.  As if their development should always be the last new neighborhood built in town.  Mark Chilton had a great post about this a few weeks ago at: http://www.orangepolitics.org/2009/11/crosspost-landscape-memory-and-east54

By this, I presume that Mark K did fewer? I ask because I went to one of Mark K's, and I don't know if that was an unusual event or not.

Isn't that the strategy we're using now to elect county commissioners in Orange County?

Someone suggested why not some districts, so I had some fun. Based on Chapel Hill with 2000 boundaries and 2000 census, I made up some districts for fun to show the results. Remember all dorms are included in town population. 2010 populations will be available 2/28/2011.Here are the names of the precincts and percentage of the total town population, you can see the precinct boundaries at the top of this thread:PrecinctBP_BATTLE PARK    2.1%       BC_BOOKER CREEK 3.6%CF_CEDAR FALLS 6.1%CH_COKER HILLS 3.0%CO_COLONIAL HEIGHTS 5.9%CC_COUNTRY CLUB 7.8%DA_DOGWOOD ACRES 0.9%EA_EAST FRANKLIN 6.7%ES_EASTSIDE 4.3%EH_ESTES HILLS 5.7%GL_GLENWOOD 3.8%GR_GREENWOOD 7.2%KM_KINGS MILL 1.1%LI_LINCOLN 7.6%MF_MASON FARM 5.9%NS_NORTHSIDE 5.3%PA_PATTERSON 1.6%RF_RIDGEFIELD 6.2%WD_WEAVER DAIRY+SAT 7.9%WW_WESTWOOD 3.9%27_CREEKSIDE ELEM 2.7%53-2_TRIANGLE CHURCH 1.2% In a hypothetical 4 district plan, each district would be between 22.5% and 27.5% of the town population. Here's a plan with four quadrants, there are lots more possibilities, and you could have more or less districts.Dogwood Acres/Westwood/Mason Farm/Country Club/Greenwood = 25.4% -- heavily student, (SW side of town)Lincoln/Northside/East Franklin/Colonial Heights = 25.5% black/liberal areas/downtown (NW side of town)Kings Mill/Glenwood/D27/D53/Ridgefield/Eastside/Booker Creek/Battle Park =25.0% east/south Chapel Hill (E side of town)Patterson/Weaver Dairy/Cedar Falls/Coker Hills/Estes Hills =24.3% north Chapel Hill (N side of town)