Behind the Times

Behind the tally sheets

Posted on May 6, 2008 by Michael Ballway
Filed Under Clinton |

Here’s my favorite part of covering elections: deconstructing the results. If you’re following along at home, the results quoted here are the hand and machine tallies as they stood Tuesday afternoon. Nine provisional ballots are excluded from these results.

Herewith, in no particular order and with no guarantees of relevance, a few observations on the exercise in democracy just concluded opposite Central Park:

* Most popular candidate on the ballot, bar none: I would have guessed John Hogan, moderator, but no — Emily McNally of the Housing Authority got 2,038 votes, 17 better than Hogan and 1,664 votes ahead of the lowest vote-getter on the list.

* Most popular candidate, contested races only: Not Kathleen Sheridan, although she was far-and-away the top vote-getter among selectmen. This honor goes to Assessor David Baird, 1,952.

* Most popular losing candidate: Bob Latini did not make it onto the Planning Board despite polling 1,029, which is more than four of the five selectman candidates got. Yes, it’s not fair to compare one race to another. But it is interesting. Put another way: Nobody with more than 1,100 votes failed to win in Monday’s election.

* Least popular winning candidate: LeBlanc, 914, followed by the two winners of the other five-for-three (typo) five-for-two race, Michael Sheridan (937) and George Oberg (956) for Parks and Rec. Put another way: Nobody with fewer than 900 votes won a race.

* Least popular winning candidate, one-on-one races only: Paul Curran, 1,251, Planning Board.

* Least popular winning candidate, uncontested races only: R. Peter Notaro, 1,867, Board of Health.

* Most blanks and write-ins: School Committee, 1,644. That’s only 100-150 fewer than both winning candidates! Is it possible that Robert Ebstein and Kathy Trautner were lucky not to have challengers this year? There’s an uncertainty principle at work here, of course; perhaps many of the blanks were admissions of ignorance, and if there were challengers, people would have taken more time to read up on the race and some would have voted for the incumbents.

* Only race where blanks and write-ins outpolled a living, breathing human being: Library trustee, 1,071, more than 300 votes more than the losing candidate in that contest. Was this the result of “bullet” voting, or is it just that people don’t care about the library trustees and skip them on the ballot? Note that the library blanks would have won the second seat on the select board, or the first seat on Parks and Rec. And it’s unfair to compare election races to each other.

* Fewest blanks and write-ins: Town collector, 173. Apparently practically everyone had an opinion on this one. By comparison, there were 268 blanks or write-ins for assessor, and 265 for solicitor.

* Fewest blanks and write-ins, uncontested races only: Housing Authority, 556. This necessarily follows McNally having the largest vote total.

* Turnout by precinct: In theory the town’s four precincts have equal populations. In practice, we saw wild differences between downtown and northern Clinton (precincts 1 and 2) and the Acre, Burditt Hill and western Clinton (precincts 3 and 4). Turnout was 587 in 1 and 589 in 2. It was 722 in 3 and 696 in 4.

* Selectman votes by precinct: Sheridan won all four, and by huge margins in 3 and 4. LeBlanc got second place in 1 and 4. He actually came in last in Precinct 2 (downtown/Central Park/Water Street). Second-place finisher in Precinct 2: Steven Mendoza, who came in last in the general balloting. In Precinct 3 (the Acre/Grove Street/eastern Burditt Hill), second place was a dead heat between the two incumbents, Joe Notaro and Bob Pasquale, both of whom live in that precinct.

* Selectman votes by percentage, by precinct: Notaro and Pasquale both made their worst showings in Precinct 4 (possibly because of the boat ramp and the rifle range?), 29 and 28 percent, respectively. Their best results were in Precinct 3: 37 percent each. They were within one percentage point of each other in every precinct. LeBlanc’s worst precinct was 2, 32 percent; his best was 4, 39 percent (nor surprising; he lives there). Mendoza had the worst one-precinct share of them all, 26 percent in Precinct 3; his best was Precinct 2, 37 percent. Sheridan was the only one to crack the 40s, doing so in three precincts (48 percent in 3 and 4, 42 in 1). Her worst showing was 39 percent in 2.

* Parks and Rec. votes by precinct: Oberg won 1 and 2. Sheridan, the incumbent, wasn’t first place in any precinct, although he finished second in 1, 3 and 4. The winner in 3 was Acre resident E. Russell Grady Sr. The winner in 4 was Jillian Bonci (who doesn’t live there).

* Difference between machine count (announced with much fanfare in the auditorium starting at 8:10ish Monday night, and reported in the Tuesday morning papers) and hand count (carried out in quiet after almost everyone had gone home, and reported in the Thursday Times & Courier): 76 votes. Enough to have potentially changed the outcomes of the second-seat races for selectman and Parks and Recreation (although, in the event, they did not).

That’s enough for now.