Lindholm Company Blog

Democrats and Republicans both turned out in higher percentages and voted earlier.

METHODOLOGY: Cumulative turnout as a percentage of voters by date.

SOURCES OF DATA: Lane County Elections; Labels and Lists, Bellevue, Washington.

Older votes both were more likely to turnout and turned out more ballots earlier.

METHODOLOGY: Cumulative turnout as a percentage of voters by date.

SOURCES OF DATA: Lane County Elections; Labels and Lists, Bellevue, Washington.

Men and women returned ballots at almost exactly the same rate.

METHODOLOGY: Cumulative turnout as a percentage of voters by date.

SOURCES OF DATA: Lane County Elections; Labels and Lists, Bellevue, Washington.

This post inaugurates a series of posts examining the demographics of ballot return dates in the May 21, 2013 Special Election in Lane County, Oregon.

This series is part of a continuing series on the May 2013 Lane County Special Election.

Posts will start later this week and continue for the next few weeks.

There will be two sets of posts. The first will show the cumulative turnout by date as a percentage of total registration. The second will show the cumulative turnout by date as a share of the eventual total turnout. This second calculation adjusts for the turnout differences by age and better shows the relative differences in turnout by date.

The file used for the analysis was created by merging data from Lane County Elections with data from Labels and Lists, of Bellevue, Washington. The match rate between the two files was 98.4%. One can be reasonably confident that the following analyses correctly represent the behavior of the electorate.

Many in the Portland area saw the 2012 takeover of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners as a major victory based on a large swing of voters.

However, as can be seen in this chart, the Clackamas County results pale compared to recent comparable results in Lane County.

This points out how poorly Portland Metro Republicans perform in nonpartisan contests compared to Republicans in Lane County in relative terms.

The partisan swing is a way to measure the relative performance of campaigns. The partisan swing in all these cases assumes that Republicans are generally favorable to these candidates and that Democrats are generally unfavorable. The equation is: Partisan swing = (Winning candidate pct. – Losing/2nd place candidate pct. + Democratic pct. – Republican pct.)

This graphic compares the performance among the pro-business candidates in Eugene and those in the county. The columns in green were winners and the ones in red were losers. Eugene pro-business candidates have to do much better than county candidates.

This also points out how big the Morrison underperformance was.

METHOD: The partisan swing is a way to measure the relative performance of campaigns. The partisan swing in all these cases assumes that Republicans are generally favorable to these candidates and that Democrats are generally unfavorable. The equation is: Partisan swing = (Winning candidate pct. – Losing/2nd place candidate pct. + Democratic pct. – Republican pct.)

In 2014, all three county (non-Eugene) county commissioner districts will be up for election. All three have pro-business incumbents. This graphic shows how well pro-business candidates have done in recent major contests.

Three were winners and one, Anna Morrison, lost. It’s very clear that Anna Morrison greatly underperformed the other pro-business candidates.

METHOD: The partisan swing is a way to measure the relative performance of campaigns. The partisan swing in all these cases assumes that Republicans are generally favorable to these candidates and that Democrats are generally unfavorable. The equation is: Partisan swing = (Winning candidate pct. – Losing/2nd place candidate pct. + Democratic pct. – Republican pct.)

This post presents the turnout by region based on three possible scenarios.

Commissioner Stewart has not run in the Eugene part of the district. This is a significant addition of urban voters to a previously predominantly rural district.

Due to the nature of the data the likelihood of the three scenarios is not symmetric. The high turnout scenario is less likely than the low turnout scenario.

Source of data: Labels and Lists

This post presents the turnout by region based on three possible scenarios.

Commissioner Leiken has not run in most of the non-Springfield part of the district. This is a significant addition of rural voters to a previously predominantly urban district.
Due to the nature of the data the likelihood of the three scenarios is not symmetric. The high turnout scenario is less likely than the low turnout scenario.

Source of data: Labels and Lists

This post presents the turnout by region based on three possible scenarios.

The Coast region includes all precincts from Mapleton west to the Coast.
The Central region includes all precincts between Mapleton and the Eugene metro area.
The City region includes all City of Eugene and Santa Clara precincts.

Due to the nature of the data the likelihood of the three scenarios is not symmetric. The high turnout scenario is less likely than the low turnout scenario.

Source of data: Labels and Lists