convincible.org

I’ve been watching the results of the California Special Election carefully. Besides my personal opinions on the propositions, I have been very interested in the voting patterns. I have always greatly disliked the idea of Red States and Blue states as it presents the state as “all of one color”. This is how the electoral process works for presidential elections, but it does not necessary well represent the population. I also dislike the term as being strangely reversed from historic precedent as traditionally more socialist positions were considered red. In fact, until recent elections, the democratic voting states were often shown as red! (See Red state vs. blue state divide for more info on state colors.) Whatever, the color doesn’t matter, the point is that the term represents the state as a whole and the results don’t look that way.

Everyone now knows all the propositions were rejected. The California Secretary of State publishes the results here: vote2005.ss.ca.gov. Today’s San Jose Mercury News had some really good graphics showing how many of the counties voted. Unfortunately these graphics don’t appear on the website. Most of the media reports heavily on the winners and losers, but not much reporting is done on the voting patterns. These charts in the Mercury news were a welcome exception.

The largest spread was on Proposition 80 (Utilities regulation) where 65.7% voted no, and 34.3% voted yes. That sounds like a pretty resounding result to me. Interestingly, it appears only the liberal hot bed of San Francisco voted for the utilities regulation with 52.8% voting yes. Looking at the chart, every other county appeared to have a majority voting against the proposition! The media should be reporting how resoundingly this state voted this proposition down. Many would consider the state’s overall vote against regulation a conservative or “red state” position; but that might be going too far.

The smallest spread was on Proposition 73 (Abortion parental notification) where 52.6% noted no and 47.4% voted yes. Interestingly a large part of inland California voted for this proposition, certainly the ‘geographic majority’ although definitely not the majority of votes. This one is definitely close with only a 5.2% spread deciding the issue. I think most would agree that voting yes on this proposition was a conservative position. With only a small spread defeating it, this doesn’t appear to make the state very blue.

When you consider what percentage of California actually votes, the mix of opinion in the state becomes even foggier. It appears the turnout was low, just less than 43% of registered voters. Approximately 6.7 million people voted at the polls, plus the absentee ballots. Although data for the absentee ballots isn’t available yet, they issued 4.6 million. If all of the absentee ballots get voted that would be a total of 11.3 million voters. There are approximately 26 million people over the age of 18 in California according to the US Census Bureau. So that would mean less than 43% of the adult population voted. Actually, that seems high as it’s the same percentage as the turnout of registered voters; which implies almost every eligible adult is registered! That seems like it must be wrong. The best data I have found about the percentage of the population that is registered to vote is here: www.calvoter.org. This document claims 22 million Californians are eligible to vote and 16.5 million were registered for the November 2004 election. This would be 75% of the eligible population being registered and sounds more reasonable to me. If the 43% turnout being reported in the media is true and 16.5 million voters remain registered, this would be 7 million voters that turned out for the special election. Hmm… it looks to me like the media aren’t counting many of the absentee ballots in the turnout numbers! Well, regardless of the discrepancies in the data, something less than 43% of the eligible population voted. Probably much less, but I haven’t been able to really determine a better number so I will stick with the 43%.

When we mix the most resounding no vote, the one with 65.7% against the utilities regulation with the 43% of the eligible population voting, we see that less than 28.3% of the eligible population voted no. Hmm… this doesn’t sound like a resounding majority of Californians cared about even the most definitively decided issue.

Where I live in near San Francisco, most of the people I meet consider California a completely blue state. And looking at the Mercury News charts, San Francisco voters did consistently have a more one sided opinion on the propositions and previous elections. But the voting record of San Francisco and the simplistic media coverage doesn’t make California really a solid blue state. Check out the actual data yourself.

Carl