May Election Analysis: Lubbock City Council District 4
District 4 is headed to a runoff.
Paul Beane won a plurality of the votes with 45.33% (about 3,100 votes) of the vote, with just under 7,000 votes cast total. Jerry Bell won 31.57% of the vote, and Tom Keisling won 23.10% of the vote. Bell and Beane will face off with early voting beginning on Tuesday.
Let’s look at how the May 10 election went:
As you can see from the map above, Paul Beane did well throughout the district.
In my mind, it’s not clear what Tom Keisling’s supporters will do in this runoff election. Will they support Bell, Beane, or stay home? Since District 4 has excellent turnout no matter the election, the preference of Tom Keisling’s supporters is likely to be one of the deciding factors of the runoff election.
Another deciding factor will be which way the highest-turnout precincts lean. Precinct 54 (Honey Elementary) alone accounts for nearly 18% (1,194 votes) of the total vote and is always the highest-turnout precinct in any election in Lubbock County.
Other high-turnout precincts in this election are:
- Precinct 52 (11%)
- Precinct 127 (10%)
- Precinct 12 (10%)
- Precinct 30 (9%)
- Precinct 123 (8%)
As with District 2, the outcome of the runoff election is unclear. Both candidates have their work cut out for them.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Wow! That’s a very interesting map. Do you have something similar for Keisling? Common sense would tell you that it will be the Keisling supporters who will now chose between Bell & Beane. I say that and I could be very wrong because historically the turnout for a runoff is crumby compared to the general election. So the runoff might just be a contest of who can get their supporters to actually take the time to vote.
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Keisling was pretty much in the 20th percentile in each precinct. Bell was in the 20th or 30th percentile in each precinct. I could do a map for Keisling and Bell later this weekend, but the Beane one pretty much tells the story.
Ordinarily, you are correct: runoffs are an exercise in pure GOTV. Whoever brings back the most of their supporters will win.
The reason I am skeptical about that being the whole story is that district 4 in particular always turns out to vote in high numbers. In other words, Keisling’s supporters are likely to bevoters who always turn out in every possible election for which they can turn out.