The first ballots for the May 21st Los Angeles Mayoral Election are in. These ballots are just a drop in the bucket, but tracking them can help understand likely turnout, ethnic share of voters, and what parts of the city are performing.
The 7,740 reported on April 30th for the General Election is just 550 higher than the 7,185 ballots received on February 12th for the Primary. And the initial ballots show similar patterns.
Over the next several reports the tracking of absentee ballots should give the campaigns, media and the public a greater sense of likely overall turnout and participation rates by geography, party and ethnicity. PDI clients will automatically see these “voted” numbers in their accounts and any purchases of data in the coming weeks will automatically remove all voters who have already cast their ballot.
By city council district we can see turnout in this first wave consistent with the primary within four percentage points.
By ethnicity we can see higher Asian and Latino turnout, lower Armenian and African American votes, and a slightly growing white share of the electorate.
The Valley/Non-Valley split appears dramatic – but this could just be a function of getting the mail to the County Registrar. It is noteworthy that previous analysis of the
late ballots from the Primary showed that a Valley mail-in ballot was twice as likely to be late than one from the rest of the city.
A full breakdown of the vote by neighborhood can be seen in this PDF: FIRST LA13L Returns