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Projecting Austin 2009 City Turnout: 50,000 About Right

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman

Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 02:04 AM CDT

I'm a numbers nerd so elections are that time of year when I get a chance to try to see how well past performance is really a predictor of the future. City elections are if anything, predictable, so below is an attempt to run the first two days of voting against some past models and see what we end up with.

First off, a note that overall, turnout is higher in raw numbers and slightly higher in percentage turnout than past years. Then again, this is a Mayoral election year and most recent years' turnout has been low even in the face of contested council elections. The following chart is from the Travis County Elections Division which reports the daily turnout countywide on the 1st day only for all elections, inclusive of those in Austin and smaller jurisdictions.

Yes, even with Monday's rain, we were able to shock the electorate by .04 percentage points higher raw participation! **ahem, cough**

So, as in past elections, I'm running my own models based upon the 2006 (Mayoral) and 2008 (Council) elections for Austin. Each day of data refines the data and rainy days like Monday can suppress the total estimated turnout. These models adjust for average excess of votes included in the daily tallies from the county that don't end up being City of Austin voters (which is measurable and reasonably predictable in past years).

Expected Total Early Vote for City of Austin by Latest Model Run (Tuesday)

Now, this is just the Early Vote estimate, but the share of the EV to Election Day vote has been trending predictably as well.

2006: 33% early
2007: No election
2008: 43% early
2009: 48% early (projected)

The easy math is to just go with a 50/50 split but I'll be conservative and use the 48/52 early to e-day split, and produce the following projected TOTAL votes by model as of Tuesday's data.

2006 mayoral model: 50,258 total votes
2008 council model: 40,360 total votes
Combined Avg model: 45,477 total votes

I expect these numbers to lift some more in coming days.

Tags: Austin, Austin City Council, Austin Mayor's Race, Turnout, (All Tags)

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Projecting Austin 2009 City Turnout: 50,000 About Right | 6 comments

I wonder if single member districts would improve voter turnout? (0.00 / 0)

Found this article discussing plurality/majority voting systems that suggests they wouldn't.

On the other hand, this [Single Member Districts] voting system also tends to misrepresent parties, produce manufactured majorities, encourage gerrymandering, discourage voter turnout, create high levels of wasted votes, and deny fair representation to third parties, racial minorities and women.

On balance, it also suggests of at-large systems...

Finally, at-large voting, in its most common form, fails to ensure that all neighborhoods in the city are represented.

by: judegalligan @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 07:07:33 AM CDT

by: you @ soon

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Also from the same article you cited: (0.00 / 0)

"However, because this is a winner-take-all system, at-large voting shares most of the same problems as single-member district plurality voting, including the misrepresentation of parties, manufactured majorities, low voter turnout, high levels of wasted votes, and denial of fair representation to third parties, racial minorities and women. And it may make some of these problems worse. In particular, this system tends to be the worst at representing racial and political minorities. It allows a majority of the voters to win all the seats on the city council, thus shutting out these minorities from representation."

by: ssuits @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 12:19:26 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong! (0.00 / 0)

I am still predicting between 87% and 88% turnout. Should be just under 366K votes. Just watch, it'll start to pick up soon.

by: Mark Littlefield @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 10:17:33 AM CDT

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48/52 is an unrealistic split (0.00 / 0)

We're not going to duplicate the November 2008 pattern, in which 3/4 of all votes were early, but there's no way that election day will be bigger than EV.Your EV numbers are bound to go up as you predict, thanks to Monday's rain, but I'll bet you a beer that the final numbers are lower than 45,477.

by: LSadun @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 12:47:06 PM CDT

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Lee prediction? (0.00 / 0)

Karl-Thomas, an earlier version of this post noted something about the Leffingwell campaign believing (but you not agreeing) that Lee may win the election without a runoff. Why is that language not in here anymore?

Am I losing my mind? I find it strange that the posting appears to be edited but no disclaimer of editing it. But I know I read it.

by: McKinney @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 15:22:06 PM CDT

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I was in a meeting (0.00 / 0)

And asked that another staff member remove it as it was a comment based on something that Leffingwell said at an event last night that may have not been reflective of his campaign stating that compared to a comment intended to rally the troops.

Please read the Community Guidelines and How to Rate Comments.

by: Karl-Thomas Musselman @ Wed Apr 29, 2009 at 16:30:27 PM CDT

[ Parent ]