Last night we received 55,000 more returned ballots for the LA City Runoff and tagged them into the system. This brings our total “voted” count to 62,815 for the May election. (PDI customers will see these voted numbers in their account, and any orders processed will automatically remove them.)
The following looks at who has voted15-days out from the May Runoff compared to the most similar time-period from the March Primary, a report received 14-days out. There are three main themes in this data:
Fewer Ballots?
The May Runoff has 12,500 fewer ballots at this comparison point, but this presumably is a function of getting the counts one day earlier. There were 55,000 ballots returned in the last nine days and no way to see if this was linear growth. In short, this in no way means that we will have lower turnout than March.
A Similar Electorate?
As can be seen above, the percentages for geographic areas (council districts, city regions) is very similar between the Primary and Runoff. This is also true for the ethnic breakdown as can be seen below in two different breakdowns: percent turnout of absentees, and percent share of the voting electorate so far.
Welcome to the Election
There are 13,000 ballots which have been returned by voters who did not cast a ballot in the Primary. This means 22% of the votes already cast are
from people who are new to this election.
The following chart shows percentages for each council district and some parts of LA. The full table can be downloaded here:LA13L RETURNS WORKSHEET.
The blue areas in this table show where the largest portions of voters didn’t vote in the Primary. For example, only 2% of the African Americans in District 1 who have returned a mail ballot this month didn’t vote in March, while among 18-24 year-olds, nearly half of the May voters didn’t vote in the Primary.
These new voters are, in percentage, slightly more likely to be Latino/Asian/Armenian and significantly younger. There is a strong relationship between these new voters and age.
If this trend was to continue, and if all Primary voters cast ballots in the Runoff, then we could see a 6-point bump in total turnout. But it is important to note that this “increase” is currently being offset by voters who cast a ballot in the Primary but have not yet in the Runoff. Will these “new” voters ultimately be a supplement to turnout, or will they supplant the voters who were engaged in March but end up taking a pass on the May election.
More will be learned about these voters as the returns continue.