November 4, 2015

St. Paul Ward 2 City Election

Gopher State Politics Institute Calls the Election for Noecker on the 5th Ballot, “if any” factor knocks down voter participation in 2nd to 6th choices.

We promised you a gutsy call a few days ago and here it is: Rebecca Noecker wins the St. Paul City Council Ward 2 seat most likely on the 5th choice ballot. We wouldn’t be surprised if it went 6th and required the Tobolt ballots to be re-allocated for second choice Noecker votes to put her over the top.

Ranked-choice voting is not our favorite, but we’ll give it to you as best we can.

These numbers may vary a bit due to rounding and possible ballot disqualifications. Ward 2 residents cast 5734 ballots November 3, 2015. A fraction over 80% were for two DFL candidates—Rebecca and Darren; 4597 1st choice votes with Rebecca having an 183 vote lead. She needs another 478 votes to win a majority. Darren needs 661.

Once a ballot has been cast for a potential winning candidate, that ballot is off the table for any future choice votes. So, 80% of the votes (41.7% for Rebecca and 38.5% for Darren) will have no effect on the 2-6 choices. The remaining 20% of the ballots will determine the winner or force the Tobolt votes to be re-allocated to Noecker if he cannot pass her in the number of votes garnered.

The data on the 2nd-6th choice voting is on the Secretary of State website. However, the data are only informative of the aggregate voting for each of the six candidates plus write-ins. Once a vote is counted, the remaining choices/ballots are not in play.

The remaining 1137 ballots that have not been allocated to one of the two DFL candidates are in play and will be counted starting Monday, November 9. Those ballots belong to the four mathematically eliminated candidates—three independents and one republican. Bill Hosko 14.6%, Sharon Anderson 1.6%, Michael Johnson 1.3% and Pat Fearing 1.9% plus write-ins 0.3% (19) to equal an 1137 non-DFL vote total.

Those ballots will be examined for 2nd choices and if any are for Rebecca or Darren they will be allocated to one of the two. We believe that the non-DFL votes will probably hang tight for three or four ballots. Then, they have no one else to vote for other than the DFL or choose not to vote a 5th or 6th choice.

We modeled a voting scenario and went through each choice mindful that 80% of the ballots were out of play and the “if any” factor was slicing voter participation in the 2nd to 6th choices heavily. On the second ballot, only 73% of the first ballot voters cast ballots. On the third ballot choice, the rate fell to 37%. On the fourth it was down to 15%. The fifth ran 12% and the sixth dropped to 10%.

Further, we had interesting phenomena that we labeled the resistance factor. On the first ballot, 1137 voters went against the DFL grain. The second saw this rise to 1293 even though there were 27% fewer votes cast. On the third this rose to 1466 even with a 63% drop in voters. On the fourth it dropped to 643 with 85% fewer votes. The fifth it slid to 455 with an 88% drop in votes. It finished the sixth at 383 with 90% vote reduction.

Darren and Rebecca just did not seem to be able to distance themselves from the other. No choice gave either a leap ahead of the other. We did our best to estimate realistic votes for each. Our model took us down to the 5th choice before it seemed Rebecca might reach a majority but was more likely to on the 6th choice ballot.

If the 20% who did not vote for either DFLer stopped voting after the 3rd or 4th ballot, they would throw the contest back to the DFL re-allocating one of their candidate’s votes to the other. If enough of the non-DFL voters decided they prefer one DFLer over the other, then their late choice vote could help the DFL duo. However, it does appear a number of DFL voters only voted for their candidate and used subsequent choices for the independent candidates or didn’t vote further. These votes for independent candidates did not count if they had previously voted for either of the two DFL candidates.

Sorry to run so long on this. Ranked-choice is complicated and we were dealing with data beyond the DFL 1st choice balloting that only reflected their thinking and not real voting statistics. We’ll enter our caveat that we could be wrong. The situation could be just too tough to analyze rationally.

Thanks for reading and congratulations to both. You’re both winners.

Correction –
We relied on the Ramsey County Elections Bureau Ranked Choice Instructional Video.
The video to our recollection did not address the issue of the two top candidates, neither having a majority.
We requested the elections bureau to review our writing and inform us of any inaccuracies, we did not hear from them as of Friday evening, November 6th.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press informed us that the top two candidates did not need a majority of all votes, but the race would be determined by a plurality.  In other words, the DFL candidate with one more vote than the other would be declared the winner.

This means Darren would need to close the 183 vote gap and pull ahead of Rebecca by one vote. Rebecca on the other hand only needs to stay one vote ahead of Darren to be declared the winner.
We still believe that the contest may be decided by the 5th or 6th ballot choice. If not then, the above plurality test will apply, and there will be no reallocation of votes for either of the top two DFL candidates.

Sorry that we misinformed you. Ranked Choice Voting is a confusing subject… Thank goodness Duluth voters rejected Rank Choice Voting!

Bob Smith, 3rd
Gopher State Politics Institute
GopherStatePolitics.com
651 222-6888