Live-blogging the election results

Consider this your source for nerdy commentary on the school board election returns as they come in tonight. Last time around, the numbers came in so fast that I could barely keep up with them; maybe the high turnout will slow things down a bit this time. You can see the results faster here, but then you’d miss all the commentary!

I’ll be posting updates (below) about individual precinct results when I find the time. The precinct map is here; you can compare it with the elementary school attendance area map here.

The top three candidates will be elected. The final results are:

Candidate	Votes	Percentage*
√ Dorau	3738	43%
√ Lynch	3121	36%
√ Kirschling	3041	35%
Hemingway	2936	34%
Cook	2671	31%
Barron	2563	29%
Lewis	2392	27%
Geerdes	2019	23%
Tate	659	8%

*The third column won’t add up to 100% because every voter can cast up to three votes.



UPDATE 1:00 a.m.  Time to call it a night.  Congratulations to Tuyet Dorau, Chris Lynch, and Brian Kirschling.  Thanks to Phil Hemingway, Karla Cook, Sara Barron, Jason Lewis, Gregg Geerdes, and Jim Tate for running.

UPDATE 12:55 a.m.  According to the site meter, this blog had over three thousand page views today.  I’m glad it’s serving some purpose, even if it’s just to pass the time when you’re waiting for results to come in.

UPDATE 12:45 a.m.:  John Deeth with some good commentary here.  He points out one striking fact: half the precincts were won by candidates who finished outside the top three.

UPDATE 12:15 a.m.:  Does bullet voting pay?  The Save Hoover group urged its supporters to use all three of their votes, because the goal was to push as many pro-Hoover candidates up as possible.  But in other circumstances, bullet voting (i.e., using less than all three votes) made perfect sense.  Voters in North Liberty and Coralville, for example, appear to have bullet voted for the two candidates from Coralville, Dorau and Lynch.  What if they had used that third vote instead?  I experimented by reallocating the unused votes from those precincts among the remaining seven candidates, in the same proportion as those candidates received in those precincts.  The result: if those voters had used all three of their votes, they would have pushed Kirschling and Hemingway up just enough for them to pass Chris Lynch, who would then have lost by a handful of votes.  Those bullet voters had exactly the effect they desired.

UPDATE 11:53:  Over three thousand votes – more than Phil Hemingway received total – went uncast because people chose not to use all three of their votes.

UPDATE 11:40: News coverage here and here.

UPDATE 11:22:  Candidates who live east of the river got 14,256 votes; candidates who live west of it received 8,869.  But first and second place went to candidates from the west side (Coralville, actually), because the east side was divided.  Had the east side united behind three candidates, they might well have won all three seats.  In the last election, east-sider Marla Swesey came in first with 66% of the vote.  This time, the highest east-side vote-getter, Brian Kirschling, got 35% of the vote, and barely made third place.  Maybe that division was unavoidable with the number of east-side candidates running, but it seems very likely that the Hoover issue played a big role in weakening the east side’s performance.  Closing an elementary school for no compelling reason is a good way to alienate a big part of your coalition.

UPDATE 11:01:  Highest number of the night: Phil Hemingway’s 75% of the vote in Hills.  Lowest: Tuyet Dorau’s 5% in Hills. 

Strangely high number of write-in votes in North Liberty and Coralville: 29, more than the rest of the district combined.  Any explanation?

UPDATE 10:30:  Lemme’s turnout was significantly higher than any other precinct -- 22.8% -- but that was true in the RPS vote in February as well.  In fact, its share of the pie wasn’t that different than you would have predicted solely from the RPS results.  (It’s not a perfect comparison, because the RPS early voters were not broken down by precinct.)  Lemme’s high turnout seems to be a function of the demographics, not of the Hoover issue or the Cook campaign.

Lemme, Mercer Park, City, Mann, and Lincoln did make up a slightly larger share of the pie than they did in the RPS vote.  But whatever was causing the turnout to nearly double was not specific to any one precinct.

UPDATE 9:58: What to make of these results?  All three candidates endorsed by Save Hoover lost.  Yet two of the three winners (Dorau and Lynch) are supportive of keeping Hoover open.  And, for what it’s worth, supporters of the third, Brian Kirschling, spent the last few days trying to convince people that he supported keeping Hoover open, too.  (I didn’t buy it; see this post.) 

The board member who voted to keep Hoover open, Tuyet Dorau, came in first place.  The board member who voted to close it, Karla Cook, lost, coming in fifth.

Candidates who supported Hoover received a total of 15,023 votes.  Candidates who did not (including Kirschling) received a total of 8,102 votes.  Those totals closely parallel the nearly two-to-one margin by which people opposed school closures at the community workshops on the facilities plan.  That two-to-one ratio keeps coming up.

That Dorau and Lynch claimed the two top spots was not too surprising, since it was pretty clear that the west side, North Liberty, and Coralville were fairly united behind them.  That made it a seven-way fight for the one remaining spot.  Another painfully close call for Phil Hemingway.

Judging from the most recent campaign finance reports, Kirschling spent at least $2.82 per vote, while Phil Hemingway, whom he narrowly beat, spent less than $.25 per vote.

 

What message (if any) will the current board take from the results?

UPDATE 9:37:  By contrast, the voters at City High precinct used 94% of their votes, on average.

UPDATE 9:32:  A relatively low rate of bullet-voting tonight.  On average, people used 88% of their votes; usually that number is down closer to 80 -- as it was in Coralville and North Liberty.

UPDATE 9:25: More precinct-by-precinct results:

Precinct 6 (Twain School): This is southeast Iowa City, pretty much everything south of Kirkwood/Lower Muscatine Road.  It’s made up mostly of the Twain and Wood attendance areas, and is the home precinct of Sara Barron and Jason Lewis.  It makes up about 12% of the total voters.  The results:

Hemingway	204
Lewis	183
Barron	176
Cook	170
Dorau	161
Kirschling	152
Geerdes	91
Lynch	88
Tate	72

Precinct 7 (City High): Close-in central Iowa City.  Mostly the Longfellow attendance area, and about a third of Hoover, and even a smidgen of the west side (near the former Roosevelt Elementary).  It makes up about 15% of the total voters.  City favored the three candidates endorsed by Save Hoover.  The results:

Barron	457
Hemingway	391
Geerdes	301
Lewis	254
Dorau	232
Kirschling	227
Cook	219
Lynch	94
Tate	58

 Precinct 8 (Lemme School): This is eastern Iowa City, extending from First Avenue past Scott Boulevard.  It’s mostly the Lemme attendance area and about a fifth of Hoover, plus Windsor Ridge.   It’s the home precinct of Karla Cook, and has about 6% of the total voters. 

Kirschling	504
Cook	429
Hemingway	402
Barron	329
Lewis	306
Geerdes	289
Dorau	193
Lynch	171
Tate	53

Precinct 9 (Hills Community Center): Hills and rural areas west of Hills.  It’s about 1% of the total voters. 

Hemingway	98
Cook	57
Kirschling	53
Geerdes	38
Barron	33
Lewis	32
Lynch	24
Tate	8
Dorau	6

  

Precinct 10 (Mercer Park Rec. Center): This is the Village Green and Mercer Park area in eastern Iowa City, and rural parts east.  It’s made up mostly of the Lucas attendance area, plus another chunk of Hoover, and is the home precinct of Phil Hemingway and Jim Tate.  It makes up about 7% of the total voters.  Like City High, Mercer Park favored the three candidates endorsed by Save Hoover Correction, misread the chart:

Cook	295
Kirschling	292
Hemingway	278
Barron	250
Lewis	218
Dorau	196
Geerdes	147
Lynch	102
Tate	86

Finally, the early voters: 

Kirschling	560
Cook	514
Hemingway	508
Dorau	493
Lynch	431
Barron	398
Lewis	370
Geerdes	338
Tate	134

 

 UPDATE 9:12:  Here are precinct-by-precinct results:

Precinct 1 (Coralville Rec. Center): This is Coralville.  It covers the attendance areas of Coralville Central, Kirkwood, most of Wickham, and some of Van Allen.  It’s the home precinct of Tuyet Dorau and Chris Lynch.  It has about 15% of the total voters.  The results:

Dorau	892
Lynch	814
Kirschling	242
Barron	208
Hemingway	208
Cook	199
Lewis	158
Geerdes	146
Tate	69

Wow, quite a difference between second and third place.

Precinct 2 (North Liberty Community Center): This is North Liberty.  It covers most of the attendance areas of Penn, Garner, and Wickham, some of Van Allen, and a tiny bit of Lincoln.  It has about 14% of the total voters.  The results:

Dorau	747
Lynch	719
Kirschling	255
Hemingway	169
Lewis	167
Barron	151
Cook	146
Geerdes	143
Tate	48

 Precinct 3 (Lincoln School): This is Manville Heights, the Normandy Drive area, and some U of I dorms.  It’s the home precinct of Gregg Geerdes, and has about 5% of the total voters.  Now that Lincoln goes to City High, this precinct really has a foot in both east and west.  The results:

Geerdes	147
Hemingway	135
Lewis	116
Dorau	111
Lynch	105
Barron	96
Kirschling	67
Cook	63
Tate	17

 Precinct 4 (Horace Mann School): This precinct starts in Goosetown and extends north toward the Coralville Dam and up Route 1.  It’s made up mostly of the Shimek and Horace Mann attendance areas, plus about a fifth of Hoover.  It’s the home precinct of Brian Kirschling, and has about 13% of the total voters.  The results:

Kirschling	427
Lewis	394
Cook	384
Hemingway	337
Barron	316
Dorau	249
Geerdes	203
Lynch	127
Tate	52

 Precinct 5 (West High): This is the west side of Iowa City.  It’s made up mostly of Horn, Borlaug, and Weber attendance areas.  It has about 13% of the total voters.  In each of the last two school elections, the (slightly different) West High precinct was the only one to choose all of the winning candidates.  It’s done the same thing tonight.  The results:

Dorau	454
Lynch	443
Kirschling	261
Hemingway	205
Cook	195
Lewis	194
Geerdes	174
Barron	146
Tate	62

More precinct-by-precinct results in a few minutes. 

UPDATE 9:00:  Precinct-by-precinct commentary coming soon.

UPDATE 8:59:  Cook is the first incumbent board member to lose re-election since Dale Schultz in 2002.  Schultz won in 1999 with 42% of the vote, then lost in 2002 with 56% of the vote!

As far as I could tell, twelve incumbents have lost in the last thirty-four years.  In 1987, three incumbents were turned out at once.  Two lost in 1999. 

UPDATE 8:57:  Turnout was 11.88%, not quite double what it was two years ago.

UPDATE 8:51:  Hemingway loses by 104 votes.

UPDATE 8:50:  It's all in.  The top three are Dorau, Lynch, and Kirschling.  Numbers in a minute.

UPDATE 8:48:  Kirschling beat Hemingway in North Liberty, so I would guess that he will do the same in Coralville.  But we'll see.

UPDATE 8:36:  Remember, Hemingway lost by 89 votes last time around.

UPDATE 8:35:  So we're just waiting on Coralville.  Lynch will probably leap into the top three, pushing either Kirschling or Hemingway out.  Hemingway needs to gain 70 votes on Kirschling have a chance.

UPDATE 8:33:  The Save Hoover endorsees, Barron, Hemingway, and Geerdes, are the top three at the City High precinct.

UPDATE 8:25:  Results are coming in too fast for me to keep up with.  Stay tuned.

UPDATE 8:09: Early votes, which will make up probably around 15% of the total, are in, with Kirschling, Cook, and Hemingway in the top three.

UPDATE 7:38: Might as well get ready for the votes to come in.

UPDATE 6:53: The 6:00 turnout figures are in. It’s impossible to make any projection based on them, because the auditor hasn’t reported 6:00 numbers in the past. But, counting early voters, 9.6% of the voters have now already voted. Lemme’s turnout rate is 21.3%, way ahead of its closest competitors, Hills (14.3%) and Mercer Park (13.7%). In sheer numbers, Coralville still leads, with 1056 voters already (counting early voters). North Liberty, Horace Mann, and Lemme are close behind. The west side, Coralville and North Liberty precincts, taken together, account for about 44% of the total votes so far cast.

UPDATE 6:45: So last night the school board adopted its class size policy on maximum class sizes at different grade levels. The superintendent described the policy as setting “aspirational goals” for class sizes, because, as the article says, there are “building and financial limitations that could prevent all classes from meeting the policy.”

This board’s achievements consist of an awful lot of aspirational goal-setting. The board adopted diversity goals without any discussion of what it would take to meet them, then adopted a long-term facilities “plan” that included $100 million more in spending than the board has access to, and now has set class size goals that it can’t afford to implement. Meanwhile, two years went by without the board installing air conditioning in the schools that need it, and the board has again fallen behind in the process of reviewing the Superintendent’s contract, because of the “busy school board schedule.”

UPDATE 6:30: It’s taking a while to get the 6:00 turnout numbers fully up on the auditor’s website. They won’t give us much to go by, anyway, since this is the first year they’ve done 6:00 numbers.

UPDATE 5:22: In the comments here, John Deeth points out that the newly drawn City High precinct contains some areas that have a high concentration of U of I students, who are less likely to vote in local elections. So the relatively low turnout at City doesn’t necessarily reflect a low turnout in the Longfellow and Hoover neighborhoods that are part of that precinct.

More turnout numbers shortly after 6:00.

UPDATE 5:03: In other news, I see that some schools are doing their part to prepare kids for adulthood in this era of NSA surveillance.

UPDATE 3:22 p.m.: The 3:00 turnout numbers are in. If the pattern is similar to the last two school elections, it looks like we will hit about 12.5% turnout. My guess (using my patented combination of dubious assumptions and questionable multipliers) is that you’ll need about 2,450 votes to win one of the three available seats.

Keep in mind that turnout in the last school board election was just shy of 6%, and that was considered high.

Patterns are similar to this morning. Fourteen percent of the Lemme precinct has now voted (including early voters), almost 5 percentage points ahead of its nearest competitor (Mercer Park). In terms of sheer numbers, Coralville is the only precinct to have already turned out over 700 voters (again, including early voters); Horace Mann and Lemme have broken 600.

Precincts that contain parts of the Hoover attendance area have turned out at a rate of 7.5%; non-Hoover precincts have turned out at a rate of 5.9%. (Compare that to the February RPS vote, when there was no significant difference between Hoover and non-Hoover precincts.

But this is all just reading tea leaves. It’s hard to make historical comparisons because these are newly drawn precincts, especially on the east side. And it’s hard to make comparisons across precincts, because some precincts have a lot of U of I students who are less likely to vote in local elections.

News coverage of turnout is here, here, here, and here. John Deeth’s commentary is here.


UPDATE 11:42 a.m.: The 11:00 turnout numbers are in. Looks to me like we could be headed closer to 12% or 13% turnout by the end of the day, a little higher than my estimate from this morning. If so, my guess is that you’d need over 2500 votes to win.

Turnout patterns are pretty similar to what they were at 9:00. Lemme is voting at a much higher rate than other precincts. Again, is that because it’s the home of Karla Cook and the heart of the far east side, or because it’s directly across the street from Hoover? Mercer Park is also voting at a high rate. It also includes neighborhoods most directly affected by the Hoover closure, and is the home precinct of Phil Hemingway and Jim Tate as well.

In sheer numbers, Horace Mann has turned out the most voters (including early voters) so far -- 430. It’s another Hoover precinct. Coralville is close behind, as are West High and Lemme.

UPDATE 10:34 a.m.: Based on the 9:00 a.m. turnout and the early voting, this election looks likely to break some records for turnout (at least for a school board election that is not accompanied by a bond referendum). Eight-hundred and twenty-six people voted this morning, and another 1,385 had already voted early. My rough guess is that that could put us in the neighborhood of almost 9,000 total voters, as compared to 4,492 two years ago. That would be 11% or 12% turnout.

My nerdy, numbers-crunching-informed (and probably wrong) guess is that it will take almost 2,400 votes to win one of the three available seats.

So far, the Lemme precinct has turned out at the highest rate. It’s the home precinct of Karla Cook, but also contains a big chunk of the Hoover attendance area. It’s a relatively small precinct, though, making up only about 6% of the total voters. In terms of sheer numbers, Horace Mann precinct has turned out the most – 332 voters (including early voters). Mann precinct is the home of Brian Kirschling, but it also contains a big chunk of Hoover. West High and Coralville have also turned out almost 300 voters each.

One of the things that will make numbers-parsing difficult tonight is that the Hoover attendance area is spread out relatively evenly over four precincts: City High, Horace Mann, Lemme, and Mercer Park.
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