Amateur Analysis

I’m really just a numbers guy who likes politics.

I have been looking at the amazing Indianapolis election to start understanding what happened. Clearly this was a protest vote, but it is still amazing that Ballard was able to pull this out. So here is what the numbers tell me:

One of the contentions in the recent Indianapolis Star poll was that the Star should have used 2004 turnout information rather than 2003.

2003: 150,440 votes cast (26.8%)
2004: 323,673 votes cast (53.7%)
2007: 160,857 votes cast (25.8%)

I guess 2007 looked like….a municipal election! Though a bit down on turnout which I find VERY interesting. It was assumed that the turnout would be high, even during election day, but it did not turn out that way. There was a lot of talk about what the turnout numbers would mean. Predominantly what I heard was that high turnout favored Ballard (large protest) and low turnout favored Peterson (the “base” voting). What we had was a low turnout and Ballard winning–so much for conventional wisdom.

So what happened (below the fold)

Let’s cherry pick the unopposed City County Counselor Districts:
District 5: 6057 for the Republicans
District 7: 3494 for the Dems
District 9: 4847 for the Dems
District 10: 3268 for the Dems
District 15: 3300 for the Dems
District 24: 5215 for the Republicans
District 25: 7563 for the Republicans

Net 3926 to the Republicans–even though they had one fewer unopposed districts. In those districts it is clear that the anti-Peterson (I interpret this as anti-taxing) vote was strong and the pro-Democrat vote was not inspired. By the way, Andre Carson was District 15 which garnered 4080 votes in 2003. Does this mean that the Carson vote turnout machine is weakened?

Overall there were 81,088 votes for Republican Counselors (compared with 55,354 in 2003) and only 64,477 votes for Democrats (compared with 76,293 in 2003). But the district Counselors balance of power remained the same (14-Rs and 11-Ds).

Center Township (which I include districts 8,9,10,15,16 and 19) had a turnout of 25,975 voters in 2007 versus 29,935 in 2003. Clearly the GOTV operation for the Democrats did not work, even though their efforts were well documented. Basically the numbers supported that we had a shift from Center Township to the Doughnut Townships due to discontent in the townships and lack of strong support in Center Township.

Future elections (Federal included) and the future balance of the City County Counsel will be difficult to maintain unless Ballard and the new Counsel don’t govern VERY well. Here’s hoping that they do.

Cross posted at Circle City Pundit.