The following is from today's press release form the Austin Firefighters. Relevant claims highlighted with a response of mine following.
The Austin Firefighter's Association today released polling data that points to their efforts as the deciding factor in Lee Leffingwell's higher than expected margin of victory and subsequent concession from opponent Brewster McCracken. "No one expected Councilman Leffingwell to win with such a high margin.
Our campaign analysis shows that efforts by our PAC were successful." said PAC Chair Lt. David Lundstedt. Many political experts expected Leffingwell to top out between 39 and 44 percent and lead McCracken by 10 points and were surprised by his 48% vote total and 20 point margin. PAC Vice-Chair and coordinator of the Leffingwell effort Fire Specialist Randy Moreno says the results are not a surprise to him. "We knew going in that turnout would be low and that a concentrated, grass roots, get-out-the-vote campaign could be successful.
Polling data provided by the AFA PAC shows an increase in voter turnout of almost 50% from 2006 in the precincts targeted by the firefighters' team. Additionally, Leffingwell won 7 of the 11 targeted precincts by well over 50%. As a result, "When we endorse a candidate we don't just lend them our name," says Association President Stephen Truesdell. "We back it up with money, time and effort."
Firefighters also point to the targeting of minority voters as crucial to Leffingwell's success. They employed a strategy to reach out to Hispanic voters, traditionally ignored by other campaigns. Efforts included Spanish language get-out-the-vote TV commercials and ads in local print media such as Arriba and La Prensa. They also used new media and social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter to reach out to younger voters. As a result, the Firefighters canvassing team knocked on over 5,000 doors and contacted over 14,700 voters.
I certainly applaud the Firefighters for their work and attempt to look back at the election results to measure the impact that they had. Measurement and analysis of actions to results is something that we see far too little of in politics and I'm not even talking about what is made public. There is far too little of it done for private means a well.
That being said, if one is going to make such claims in a press release, it would be appropriate to release data that can be analyzed by third parties to verify the validity of such claims (which is lacking here). Without an ability to verify claims, they remain simply that- claims.
For instance, the Firefighters also had expenditures and support for Place 1 candidate Perla Cavazos who garnered less than 35% of the vote yet nary a word about the effectiveness of their efforts in that race. Just because she lost doesn't mean that their efforts weren't effective- they very well could have been responsible for thwarting a larger loss. That information is just as valuable and relevant to validating the effectiveness of their efforts in the Mayor's race.
So I'm curious as to which precincts were targeted, even as I acknowledge that the best targeting this cycle may not have been by precinct, but down to the "next most likely voter" in any precinct which was a factor in Chris Riley's election. I'll ask the campaign staff to what extent they might be willing to share some insight into that strategy.
And to put some actions to my own questions and critique, I'm doing a little analysis on those precincts targeted by the 10,000 Austin Progressive Coalition doorhangers since technically sat on that board this year. Look for that post (hopefully) later this week.
Update: Thinking about it a bit more, a ratio of 7 out of 11 precincts being won is far less than the percentage of precincts won by Leffingwell citywide. And from what I was told by other sources during the campaign after putting up this post, it's my understanding that the targeted precincts were in Southest Austin largely in the 4th County Commissioner District. Year over year, that area had the worst turnout by percentage (pdf) and raw votes (pdf) of any place in the city so a 50% increase of the vote there likely represents less than a thousand vote difference in turnout. In a best case scenario based on the turnout of ~58,000 voters, that would be a shift of less than 2% points. Certainly helpful, but just a part of the greater puzzle that boosted Lee's total.
If what I'm told is wrong and the precincts referenced are elsewhere, I'll happily stand corrected. I'm just working with what was shared in the press release and during the campaign.
Update 2: I read this press release slightly different and likely incorrect as pointed out by David in the comments. I also have received the precinct level data since writing this post and will follow up tomorrow on it (though I received it from another member of the local media, not the firefighters media contact who I asked). |
