Elections
News and opinions related to local elections.
The maps in this post show the precinct-level results of the Carrboro mayoral and alderman elections.
I was a little worried that the polling in Chapel Hill would screw up the annual Pundit of the Year contest, but since PPP Polls had Penny in 6th and she actually came in 1st, I think we can safely say that pundits had to rely on their own intuition. No-one (not even Penny) predicted Penny would come first in Chapel Hill so no contestants won on the order.
The following people did predict the winners correctly in all of the races though, and most of them put their entries in before Tom Jensen announced the PPP figures anyway:
Jason Baker, Penny Rich, Mark Chilton, Erin Crouse, and Greg Bell! Each of them will get a gift certificate for OP's Zazzle print-on-demand store.
In averaged results, the contestants as a whole picked the winners in every race except for School Board. However, we got the order wrong on the Chapel Hill Town Council and Carrboro Board of Aldermen due to the success of challengers Penny Rich and Sammy Slade. Read on for aggregated predictions...
With the election mercifully in the rear view mirror Chapel Hill political observers will now shift their focus to the appointment of a replacement for Bill Strom.
Our poll found voters in town evenly divided on whether one of the losing candidates in yesterday's election should be appointed to fill the Strom seat- 38% in favor, 38% opposed, and 24% unsure.
Trumping that finding with the loss of Jim Merritt though is probably the question we asked about whether Chapel Hillians thought it was important to have an African American on the Town Council. 57% of voters said yes to that with just 28% dissenting, and I imagine given the strong support from the community that's the direction the Council will now go in with the appointment.
Two other key findings from the poll, neither of which is particularly surprising given the returns. 51% of Chapel Hill voters support publicly financed elections with only 31% opposed. Given Mark Kleinschmidt's win and Penny Rich's first place finish it's clear there was no backlash from that and it's even possible the opposite was true.
I want to thank everyone for their help and support. I appreciated the opportunity to join your discussions and learn from you. I congratulate the winners for school board and offer them my best wishes. One of the best parts of the campaign was getting to know more people, make new friends and meet voters. I promise to continue working for children in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro public schools.
I'm sad to see that in a community facing accusations of racism because of Greenbridge and a potential waste transfer site, we managed to vote out our only African-American Council Member. If I'm not mistaken, since Merritt declined to apply, there are no potential African-American candidates from Strom's seat either, right?
Oh well, this should make for a couple of years of fun reading in the Chapel Hill News and Chapel Hill Herald.
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