Bullet Ballots for Mark Andrew by City Ward #mplsmayor
David Brauer was wondering whether the 6th Ward was an outlier for bullet ballot voting for Mark Andrew. Bullet ballot voting being voting for a 1st choice while leaving the 2rd and 3rd choices blank. Here’s his question:
@curtisgilbert @betsyhodges @MarkForMpls @MPRsLauraMc I’d be really curious what percent of Mark’s bullet ballots came from the Sixth Ward.
— David Brauer (@dbrauer) November 15, 2013
And here’s the answer based on some quick filtering of the election results.
Ward Mark Andrew Bullet Ballot Votes W-1 190 W-2 100 W-3 241 W-4 129 W-5 109 W-6 1,833 W-7 178 W-8 115 W-9 130 W-10 152 W-11 201 W-12 261 W-13 225
If your preferred candidate is going to end up in the top-2 it doesn’t really matter if you’re made additional choices since they won’t come into play. But, it’s still an interesting choice to not pick additional candidates to include just in case your candidate doesn’t perform as well as you might hope. Chances are pretty good that the 1,833 voters in Ward 6 (and the 3,864 city-wide) who voted with a bullet ballot for Mark Andrew would have liked a chance to decide between the other 34 candidates. I doubt they really considered the other 34 to be equally capable as potential mayors.
I’m sure there may be other reasons why they did this. Perhaps they received bad information from campaigns on how votes would be counted? Didn’t understand the ballot instructions? I’m not sure what the deal is here. But, one this is clear: Ward 6 is the outlier with 47% of all Mark Andrew bullet ballots cast.
Here’s the breakdown of Ward-6′s bullet ballot voted for Mark Andrew by Precinct:
Precinct Mark Andrew Bullet Ballot Votes W-6 P-1 44 W-6 P-2 222 W-6 P-3 887 W-6 P-4 142 W-6 P-5 220 W-6 P-6 84 W-6 P-7 105 W-6 P-8 68 W-6 P-9 61
Here’s a precinct map for Ward 6:
