Election 2009 Maps: Chapel Hill

The maps in this post show the precinct-level results of the Chapel Hill mayoral and council elections. The maps are based on unofficial numbers updated on November 6 by the Orange County Board of Elections.

An important note: Approximately 18% of the voters in the Chapel Hill election voted early and could not be represented in the maps below. Thus, these maps are inaccurate to the extent that early voters made different choices than people who voted on Election Day. The overall results among early voters are remarkably similar to the Election Day results in both the mayoral and council races. However, I cannot draw any conclusions about what precinct-level differences may exist.

The first map below shows the 22 precincts in the Chapel Hill municipal boundary, including parts of Durham County.

Chapel Hill Precincts

MAYOR

Because this was a close race between Mark Kleinschmidt and Matt Czajkowski, I condensed the central part of the scale so the maps would highlight the differences between the candidates' results. Kleinschmidt's strongest precincts were Northside (75%), Lincoln (70%), Weaver Dairy Satellite (67%), and Mason Farm (63%). Other precincts in which he exceeded 55% of the vote included Coker Hills, Colonial Heights, Country Club, Kings Mill, Weaver Dairy, and Westwood. Czajkowski's strongest precincts were Battle Park, Cedar Falls, Durham, Glenwood, and Patterson. (I did not include maps for Augustus Cho and Kevin Wolff. They received less than 4% of the vote combined.)

[Update 11/10/2009: As noted above, the results maps do not include early or absentee votes. Therefore, I have added a third map below showing the percentage of votes in each precinct that were early or absentee votes. The new map seems to confirm (1) Gerry's observation that precincts that leaned heavily toward Kleinschmidt in Election Day voting also had high levels of early voting and (2) Jason's observation that a high level of early voting in the Battle Park precinct may have offset some of the heavy Election Day turnout for Czajkowski in that precinct.]

Chapel Hill Mayor: CzajkowskiChapel Hill Mayor: KleinschmidtChapel Hill Mayor: Key Chapel Hill Mayor: Early/Absentee VotesChapel Hill Mayor: Early/Absentee Votes Key

COUNCIL 

The maps suggest that fourth-place finisher Gene Pease tended to receive votes from the same precincts as Czajkowski (and non-seat winner Matt Pohlman), and that first-place finisher Penny Rich and second-place finisher Ed Harrison tended to have support in the same areas as Kleinschmidt (and non-seat winner Jim Merritt) — with some interesting counterexamples and a good deal of overlap, of course. I'm hoping Xan Gregg will explore some of the correlations among the candidates, like he did for the last election (hint, hint).

Chapel Hill Council: DehartChapel Hill Council: EasthomChapel Hill Council: HarrisonChapel Hill Council: Key
Chapel Hill Council: MerrittChapel Hill Council: PeaseChapel Hill Council: Pohlman
Chapel Hill Council: RaymondChapel Hill Council: Rich 

Issues: 

Comments

1) The early votes will be assigned to individual precincts within 90 days and you will be able to do a definitive map! 2) all the images are dead

They're back, like magic.

Is it possible to show the same map with information on average income or average home value? 

Lots of interesting stuff here. One of the first things I notice  is that most candidates do their best in their home precinct, but not all of them! (Look at Damon's Google Map http://www.orangepolitics.org/map to see where the candidates live.)  I think Ed Harrison is the only exception I see to this this rule, not too surprising as the Durham part of Chapel Hill seems to be voting very conservatively.The other thing that grabbed me was the mayoral voting pattern. I would have expected Mark Kleinschmidt's support to look roughly like the yolk of an egg, with Matt Czajkowski's voters forming the egg white.  This is a vast over-generalization, but in past years there has been a pattern of people who live closer to the center of town voting more progressively (I especially remember getting support in the egg yolk when I ran in 1999) than the more suburban neighborhoods, but it may be that these patterns are morphing into something else.  What is happening here? Ideas?

the early voting site, especially for student precincts.  And I know Mark's campaign put plenty of effort into early voting and student voting.  I also recall while driving from class to the election night party at the R&R grill hearing on WCHL that Mark was ahead in the early voting numbers... numbers which haven't been taken into account in this map.  I don't know if that is enough to account for much or any of the change, but as was mentioned before, it'll be interesting to see the map after early votes have been assigned to individual precincts to see a "definitive map"

Mark K carried early voting by 106 votes, which was almost exactly his margin.  Four precincts had 40+% of their votes cast early, all of them had dorms in them. Country Club topped the list at 54%. Seven precincts had less than 20% early voters.

Gerry: Where are you finding the early votes broken down by precinct?

I sorted an ftp file for early voting at the State Board of elections site by precinct. This does not tell WHO the people voted for, just how many votes cast per precinct. I will post the url tomorrow. Then I added the total per precinct to the total vote cast for Mayor in the precinct on election day. The I did a division to get the percentages. UPDATE:The statewide early voting file for 2009 is atftp://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/enrs/absentee11xx03xx2009.zip 

Thanks for the link, Gerry.I have added a new map above for the mayoral contest to show the percentage of votes in each precinct that were early or absentee votes. The map seems to confirm both your observation about precincts with dorms and Jason's observation about Battle Park.

"I think Ed Harrison is the only exception I see to this this rule, not too surprising as the Durham part of Chapel Hill seems to be voting very conservatively."How ungrateful.  I can tell you from firsthand experience that the only time the Durham County part of Chapel Hill gets its fair share of attention is when Ed Harrison brings it up.

Council-member-Ed is different from neighbor-Ed. Council-member-Ed brings specific and valuable expertise to the council table. I wouldn't characterize Durham County CH residents as ungrateful. I would say that some might have data points that the rest of the town doesn't.  As for minority representation on the council. There's a couple of ways of doing this. Having some council representation voted on by precincts with a couple of at-large seats is one way. My husband has a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics so I was asking him about five-way races when people have four votes. He pointed out that each electoral voting design will produce certain biases none of which are inherently good or bad. For instance, another way to get minority representation on the council is to do exactly what accidentally happened this last time. Give people four votes for five seats. In that scenario, it's very likely that the person who would have come in first in a five-vote/five-seat ballot to come in second in a four-vote/five-seat ballot. (If I'm not mistaken, PPP was predicting that Ed Harrison would come in first, but in reality he came in a close second, although admittedly the races were too close to call.) The four-vote/five-seat design also makes it easier for a minority (and by that I mean a VOTING minority block) to get elected to that 5th seat. This is a very interesting question. With all at-large one-vote-for-one-seat voting, it makes it more likely that minority representation on the council will come about by council appointment.   

If each voter is allowed to spend his or her votes anyway they want, then you don't have to go through the pain of drawing districts. Voters will organize across physical boundaries to align themselves in political blocs.For those who aren't familiar with cumulative voting, in this past election each voter would have had four votes to use. All four votes could be given to one candidate or two to one & two to another, etc. In 1992, Orange County formed a committee to look at better representing the citizens and cumulative voting was one of the suggestions that they came up with. It was promptly swept under the rug. Will Raymond, as he mentioned on OP somewhere, also recently supported this approach. It's simplicity and ease of application make it superior to districts.

I forgot to consider cumulative voting. And in the past election we didn't have a bona fide four-vote/five-seat option as the 5th place finisher was not guaranteed a seat.

A lot of fringe progressive voters were taken in by the "anti-Foy, Strom conspiracy constant drumbeat, we need someone who really knows how to lower taxes, why are we seeing tall buildings" line that was propagated by Matt Cz & others. Never mind that there was no conczistency to the business-anti-business theme that emerged. How many times did we read or hear progressive voters say that, while they didn't know where Matt Cz stood, they hoped that he did understand environmental issues? For many reasons - uncertainty, changing times, familiar faces for just a little too long, and maybe just a touch of homophobia (no - not in Chapel Hill...) and Kleinschmidt's reticence in his campaign to stay ahead of Matt Cz's propensity to say whatever it took to exploit the many reactions to Chapel Hill going through accelerated changes - the mayoral race seemed to absorb so much of the uncertainty and controversy of the last year. The Council race did not reflect that uncertainty. The returns were very much in line with so many previous races where progressive candidates that shared concern about ecological sustainability and pressing social issues took the top three slots with a generally pro- business candidate taking the fourth slot.

Gem of a post. How did you become so enlightened?Just think... if the other 48% of the electorate had your brains (what a bunch of morons!) Mark and company could be enjoying healthcare benefits for life. 

The self-ascribed progressives, those open minded individuals who think they are the only ones who care about the environment and social services, labelled everyone who didn't share their friendships as conservative. Even worse, I heard "the others" called liars over and over again with no explanations. The "If you're not one of us, your against us" worked with some and put off others (myself included). The whole campaign season, for both towns, reminded me of movies and books I've read from the 1950s and 60s about backroom politics and good ole boy networks. The faces and demographic profiles of the individuals may be different, but the methods were the same. Nothing was transparent, and who you affiliate with took precedence over everything else. And yet over and over the battle cry of "we're the progressives" was proclaimed with great pride. The status quo developed a couple of chinks. We'll have to see where it goes from here. 

If you go to the events section & click show past events you can see our groud game for Kleinschmidt's campaign every step of the way.http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=91222152476I mean of course Mark did a lot of canvassing and campaign work without teams of volunteers helping too, especially for the small precincts when knocking on doors, but practically every big volunteer event is there for the world to see. And you can see all the volunteers (that use facebook) marked as officers to highlight all the volunteer work they did for us whether it was sign making, sign distribution, canvassing/knocking on doors, phone banking/making calls, early vote rallying, or poll tening/giving out lit at polling sites.And the facebook group was open, so anyone could join without permission/approval requirement setting turned on, and recieve the messages we sent out about events, info on the debate, forums,  volunteering, and other campaign activities and updates. Granted I'm newer to Chapel Hill politics than some, but everything I had my hand in and was able to witness was open and transparent.  Anyone could see what we are doing, where we were doing it, when were doing it, and who was helping.

Jake--my observation about the lack of transparency had nothing to do with the way Mark's campaign was run. I admire the way you used new technologies to organize.Issues with transparency that clouded this election were Strom's departure and who knew in advance, the Cam Hill flyer, etc. I don't believe that Mark had anything to do with the lack of transparency with these issues; but saying 'I didn't know' is a not a strong response. If we believe transparency in government is an important principle, we need to speak out definitively when that principle is violated.

Additionally, you didn’t have to even join the group to see what Marks campaign was up to. If you were a Facebook user, you could just search for (and bookmark if desired) the group. Mark and his volunteers were out there every weekend canvassing, also Mark had people working the pools at nearly every precinct all day. And it was all there for anybody to examine.

Interesting... I just discovered I could bring up the group even while logged out of Facebook (which is even better from a transparency point of view). Natrually, some information (such as members last names) was not visible, but all the events and canvassing dates are there for all to see.

Again, great job on this, Jake!

John Rees

I think Mark's analysis is pretty accurate. I felt that Mark Kleinschmidt was taking the brunt of people's frustrations with everyone else but him. Not to discount that frustration nor the 48% that voted for Matt Czajkowski, but we also saw the Town Council candidates who seemed most aligned with the current Council do the best. So we have to at least admit that there is some complexity in the electorate right now, not a monolithic groundswell against the current direction.

Seems very obvious that Matt C. got most of his support from Meadowmont, Southern Village and the neighborhoods along Weaver Dairy. None are what what you might call middle-class neighborhoods, so quite obviously there was an income effect in the vote. The northeast-tier neighborhoods also have trended conservative in several Chapel Hill elections now. There likely is also some lingering fallout in Meadowmont and Southern Village from folks in the "progressive" wing using them as rhetorical whipping-boys over the years.The outliers to me are the northwest (spillover from the hard feelings over the landfill and Carrboro annexation?), Battle Park and Durham. The latter two I don't have an explanation for. 

I used to live in Battle Park, so let me defend my former turf with some numerical considerations.  :)  First, keep in mind that it's the second smallest precinct in the county in terms of population (only Weaver Dairy Satellite, the Carol Woods precinct, is smaller), so it takes a relatively small number of votes to make a difference in which way the precinct swings, especially in a close election.  Twenty people voting the other way would have made the race a tie here.That aside, Battle Park has a very dedicated and hard working Democratic precinct leadership, who probably did a good job of turing people out to vote, and, as we always like to encourage folks to do, turning people out to vote early.  The data supports this.  According to the state board of elections, they had 82 early voters and 6 absentees.  Assuming that everyone who voted on Election Day voted for mayor, that means there were a total of 275 voters from Battle Park, and that those 82 who voted early represented 29.8% of the votes in the precinct - much higher than the Chapel Hill average of about 18%.  My guess (and this is just a guess) is that we'll see when the early voting totals are added back in the Mark indeed won the precinct, or at least didn't lose it so badly.  52 of the 82 early voters (63%) were Democrats, and while I'm not trying to rehash any arguments we've already had here, I think it's clear that most Democrats who voted in the municipal elections voted for Mark.

I think Mark ran a better ground game and was the more compelling candidate and won the day based on that. I guess that's just too boring a response, but then we couldn't spend days writing about it. I don't think the external junk at the end amounted to anything more than noise.

Sorry, but you missed the townhomes, trailer parks, Rainbow Heights and Parkside (even Larkspur is cheap compared to some in-town neighborhoods).As for fall-out, for those who have never come up MLK past Estes, it's worth a trip. Parkside is about as Middle Class as you can get in a Single Family Detached home. When they were built, most units were sub $200,000. The neighborhood was referred too as "appraisal busters" for the Windsor Park neighborhood across MLK.I think it would be a mistake to assume that income was a determining factor in an election where no candidate got to 50% of the vote.

All three of the neighbborhoods you mention are west of MLK, so if I understand the precincts correctly, they are not in Weaver Dairy. Windsor Park, the walled communities on Weaver Dairy road, and many wooded cul-de-sacs tell a different story.

Why do they get to vote at the Fire Station in my neighborhood, but I don't?Since I can walk to it, and live off Weaver Dairy, I forgot that we are technically grouped in Orange County. It makes no sense. It also makes it easier for people to forget that average people are here. How convenient is that.  

"Seems very obvious that Matt C. got most of his support from Meadowmont, Southern Village and the neighborhoods along Weaver Dairy." That's ironic, since a major policy plank of his against building more developments like Meadowmont or Southern Village. 

Awesome point.

Czei--I never heard Matt say we shouldn't be going with mixed use development. What I heard he say and write was that we need data to show that they are accomplishing what they are intended to accomplish before moving forward with additional developments. It's  been my understanding that his interest was in the process--making sure the theory works in this community--versus the product.

My question is this:  why single out mixed-use development for further study? The implication is there's something wrong with mixed-use development, and the predominate 60's-70s style cul-de-sac developments are just fine.And yes, I have an axe to grind.  In my opinion most of Chapel Hill since 1950 up until the last 10 years was built without any thought to what the place was going to look like 50 years later, and the result has been sprawl and traffic gridlock. But instead of holding up a magnifying to what caused the current situation he wants to investigate the antidote instead. 

Perhaps we would learn what mix of residential and commercial works best. We might also learn what support structures (like signage) the commercial properties need to be most successful. We might also learn that condos/townhomes turn over more frequently or that families with more than 1 child prefer single-family homes to townhomes/condos. That would help developers provide what our population wants/needs.

That information is all useful, but none of those were mentioned in Mr. Czajkowski's campaign materials.  It doesn't take a genius to see that the language Councilman Czajkowski used in his campaign was meant to appeal to constituents unhappy with density, which meant talking tough about all recent construction. I can only assume he focused on the points most important to his agenda, and those betray on an obvious misunderstanding of the entire point of mixed-use developments.  

Intersting point about "new urbanism," Ray.  I wonder if it would be accurate to say that newer neighborhoods (and presumably newer residents) were more likely to vote for Matt. I'm thinking of Southern Village, Meadowmont, new developments arond Weaver Dairy Road, for example.

This would also support my theory that the newest residents to Chapel Hill are often the most resistent to change here.  As if their development should always be the last new neighborhood built in town.  Mark Chilton had a great post about this a few weeks ago at: http://www.orangepolitics.org/2009/11/crosspost-landscape-memory-and-east54

I think it's funny how there was a whole post about this and now when it's convenient, out come the labels again.I don't think it's fair to lump anyone in a group. It's convenient, but it's wrong. It's also a bit ironic.And who is really new here? We are talking about neighborhoods that are over 10 years old in some cases. I know that I am certainly not anti-growth. Maybe some of my neighbors are, but I would love to have some shopping on my side of MLK, so I don't have to risk my life getting across the street. I know, personally, I want to see a true growth plan and not an SUP for everything, but that is a lot harder than simply applying easy labels. 

This is why I said "wonder" and "theory," etc.  Any generalization is inaccurate almost by definition.  There are still trends and I think they're worth discussing.  I'm not definiing who's new and who's not, but clearly we can say that X has lived here longer than Y, no?When you say "I want to see a true growth plan and not an SUP for everything" do you know that I advocated for precisely this for years while I was on the Planning Board (and where was Matt C then?) or are you just arguing against an idea of what you think I think?  How is that more accurate than applying labels?I think we ALL need to stop jumping to conclusions so much, or it's going to be impossible to even have rational discussions.

I don't know that it's the case that the people living in the new-urbanist communities are more resistant to change. It may be different for newcomers who live in older Chapel Hill neighborhoods, but that's my impression of those who live in newer ones. Many of the people I know live in Meadowmont, because that's where I live, and I haven't heard a whole lot of objection to East 54, to point to one example. Same with the few I know who live in Southern Village.To the extent Chapel Hill residents are opposed to East 54 because of its ugly design and the overwhelming facades of the buildings, those characteristics defines Meadowmont architecture as well, so it makes it harder to be so critical. :)I don't think the support for Matt C. in MM and SV was based in any way on wanting the town to stop changing, because he was pretty adamant about the need to bring more commercial development to town. His support came from the thought that he would be more fiscally responsible, and little else.

was a key factor. That's why I posted a blog entry that I hoped would start a discussion on the merits of such an approach.http://www.orangepolitics.org/2009/11/how-authentic-is-the-campaign-issue-of-controlling-spending

Wondering if the spate of neighborhood meet-and-greet get-togethers for Matt Czajkowski actually did have an effect on vote distribution.  Somewhere I saw a list of hosts/hostesses for these groups, and it would be interesting to see whether there's any correlation with precinct voting patterns.  In such a close race with such low turn-out, it's not inconceivable. 

By this, I presume that Mark K did fewer? I ask because I went to one of Mark K's, and I don't know if that was an unusual event or not.

http://www.new.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=168771216866In the election night speech Mark thanked numerous people for hosting meeting and greets.  I don't know if that is an extensive list (grad school precluded me from attending some events), but he certainly did meet & greet type events.

I don't know exactly how many such events for Matt Czajkowski there actually were, and unfortunately I can't recover his ad thanking the hosts; but my imperfect memory has the impression that there were somewhere between a dozen and twenty.  Would welcome confirmation or correction on that, and if Mark Kleinschmidt had as many or more, it would still interest me to see the locations plotted against results, just out of curiosity after an extremely close election.  Doing that, however, would raise major methodological questions if we were actually trying to prove or disprove something.  The samples are small and - above all - hosts might well live in areas already inclined more toward one or the other candidate, so cause and effect would be hard to tease apart.  Of course, the goal of the receptions might well have been more a matter of getting out the vote than changing any minds, and in this close election, turnout  was a significant factor.  However, the traditional purpose of candidate meet-and-greets has been fund-raising. If one is a VOE candidate and the other is not, wouldn't donation results have differed?  

There are at least a dozen Meet & Greet or Meet Mark events listed here:http://www.mark4mayor.com/calendar/As a VOE candidate I have to imagine these events were more Get Out The Vote, and Get Out The Volunteers, rather than Get Out Your Wallets.  Although I'm sure getting 5 to 20 dollar donations helped too.  I doubt both campaigns had the exact same amount of these events, but it sounds like they had a comprable amount. I too would find it interesting to see the locations of these events plotted on a map against voter turned out.  I do know few of these events were on campus meet and greets which I imagine combined with our sizable on campus early vote rallies, flyering, attending the debate, putting up signs with our endorsements, Mark himself being there at the polling site during some of the early voting times to meet people, having people pass out campaign lit at all the sites where students early vote (we had poll tenders at almost every precinct, but we highlighted the student precincts so that student volunteers could help there) and all that may of had some effect for on early voting and student vote turn out. My thought is meet & greets might have some correlection to vote, but alone might not be an accurate predictor, because with any single aspect of a campaign, that thing alone can't do all that much, but the sum is greater than its parts.

I think volunteers hosted 32 or 33 meet-and-greets for Matt Cz.

What would this years outcome have been if Council seats were not elected town-wide but by precinct or precinct-cluster? 

There likely would have been different candidates. If there were districts, one of them would have been overwhelmingly student populated. One of them probably would be more GOP tilted. "The current system of electing [aldermen] city wide increases campaign costs. A combined ward and city-wide system of electing [aldermen] would encourage broader community representation." (from my 1973 campaign brochure). I tried bringing this up after my election, no other council members were interested. Of course, they were elected at-large. A voter petition forced a successful referendum in Raleigh in 1972 that brought the still current five district, two-at large plan. I am sure that was fresh on my mind.

Isn't that the strategy we're using now to elect county commissioners in Orange County?

Orange county commissioners is a partisan election, with a cobbled together system with voting only in the district in the primary and voting at large in the general. What I had suggested back in 1973 was five districts where only district residents vote, and also two at-large seats. It would remain a plurality election like now.  Again, I was just stealing most of the idea from Raleigh which had adopted it in 1972, though Raleigh votes in October with a November runoff if no candidate gets a majority.

The BoCC wouldn't put a full district system in place because the northern part of the county would become competitive for a Repug to win a BoCC seat.  The current half-way system allows them to say they are ensuring rural representation without getting any Repugs.

Someone suggested why not some districts, so I had some fun. Based on Chapel Hill with 2000 boundaries and 2000 census, I made up some districts for fun to show the results. Remember all dorms are included in town population. 2010 populations will be available 2/28/2011.Here are the names of the precincts and percentage of the total town population, you can see the precinct boundaries at the top of this thread:PrecinctBP_BATTLE PARK    2.1%       BC_BOOKER CREEK 3.6%CF_CEDAR FALLS 6.1%CH_COKER HILLS 3.0%CO_COLONIAL HEIGHTS 5.9%CC_COUNTRY CLUB 7.8%DA_DOGWOOD ACRES 0.9%EA_EAST FRANKLIN 6.7%ES_EASTSIDE 4.3%EH_ESTES HILLS 5.7%GL_GLENWOOD 3.8%GR_GREENWOOD 7.2%KM_KINGS MILL 1.1%LI_LINCOLN 7.6%MF_MASON FARM 5.9%NS_NORTHSIDE 5.3%PA_PATTERSON 1.6%RF_RIDGEFIELD 6.2%WD_WEAVER DAIRY+SAT 7.9%WW_WESTWOOD 3.9%27_CREEKSIDE ELEM 2.7%53-2_TRIANGLE CHURCH 1.2% In a hypothetical 4 district plan, each district would be between 22.5% and 27.5% of the town population. Here's a plan with four quadrants, there are lots more possibilities, and you could have more or less districts.Dogwood Acres/Westwood/Mason Farm/Country Club/Greenwood = 25.4% -- heavily student, (SW side of town)Lincoln/Northside/East Franklin/Colonial Heights = 25.5% black/liberal areas/downtown (NW side of town)Kings Mill/Glenwood/D27/D53/Ridgefield/Eastside/Booker Creek/Battle Park =25.0% east/south Chapel Hill (E side of town)Patterson/Weaver Dairy/Cedar Falls/Coker Hills/Estes Hills =24.3% north Chapel Hill (N side of town)

It seemed to me that a lot of older voters were inclined to vote for Matt Cz.

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