On Friday we looked just at the 2005 San Diego Primary and Runoff Elections, with the runoff being a bit more complicated because it was being held concurrent with a statewide special election.
Today we look a bit more closely at the 2005 Mayoral and how it fits in with other past elections. The first lens is San Diego Neighborhoods. Those familiar with the city know the important distinctions between very defined communities, with sets of neighborhoods comprising coastal San Diego, another set of inland and more conservative Northern San Diego, and then a set of multi-ethnic and LGBT stronghold neighborhoods in the south.
This first chart simply shows turnout by neighborhood for the 2005 Primary and Runoff.
The lowest percentage turnout is Miramar, for obvious reasons, followed by San Ysidro and SE San Diego East and West. The highest turnout communities are La Playa followed by University South, Mission Hills and La Jolla.
Introducing other past elections since the 2005 special helps place that election into a context with more recent Primary, General and Statewide Special elections. As can be seen, this turnout pattern is mirrored by other elections – with the Mayoral Primary clustering with the statewide Primary elections and 2009 Special, then the Mayoral Runoff clustering with the Statewide Gubernatorial General Elections and the 2012 stand-alone Presidential Primary.
Looking at these same elections and considering what type of voters actually cast ballots you see another way in which the Mayoral Special Primary and Runoff behave similar to other San Diego Primary and General Elections since.
In terms of rank-order of turnout percentages, renters, those in apartments and ethnic voters have tended to have lower turnout. The PDI Database has a couple extra partisan categories titled “DEMPLUS” and “REPPLUS,” adding to registered Party voters those who have pulled a party ballot, donated to a candidate in a partisan race, or were previously registered with a party. In a place like San Diego with the growing number of independent voters, this data becomes even more valuable.
The truly-nonpartisan voters (those who don’t have any sign of partisan activity) are near the bottom in turnout in all types of elections. The DEMPLUS voters turnout in higher numbers than the base Democrats in the Mayoral contests, but that seems to fluctuate a bit depending on the election. The opposite is true for Republicans, but, again, the distinction is slow and can flip depending on the race.
In some parts of the state, PAV voters show a markedly higher turnout, but that is not as evident here, with PAV voters performing better than Dems but no better than Republicans.
And, of course, the highest turnout population, as always, is the voters who contribute to political campaigns.