Official Final Election Results: The official winners for City Council were (in order of election):
Leland Cheung, Tim Toomey, David Maher, Henrietta Davis, Denise Simmons, Craig Kelley, Marjorie Decker, Minka vanBeuzekom, and Kenneth Reeves.
For School Committee, the official winners were (in order of election):
Fred Fantini, Patty Nolan, Alice Turkel, Mervan Osborne, Richard Harding, and Marc McGovern.
Complete City Council and School Committee Official Final Results and Extras
(PDF includes Counts with transfers, Ward/Precinct #1 votes, #2 vote distribution for all candidates, and number of rankings)
Spreadsheets of City Council and School Committee Official Final Results and Extras
(Excel file includes Counts with transfers, Ward/Precinct #1 votes, #2 vote distribution for all candidates, and number of rankings)
Round-by-Round Official Final City Council Results (HTML)
Round-by-Round Official Final School Committee Results (HTML)
Official Final City Council #1 Vote Distribution by Ward/Precinct (PDF)
Official Final School Committee #1 Vote Distribution by Ward/Precinct (PDF)
Traffic Report: Through Election Day, the Candidate Pages had a total of:
3,774 unique visitors
More than 16,237 candidate pages viewed just on Election Day.
33,546 pages viewed during Nov 1 – Nov 8.
44,842 pages viewed for October-November (so far)….
The Candidate Pages consisted entirely of the words of the candidates – no endorsements, no opinions of the editor of these pages. The fact that so many Cambridge residents took advantage of this resource to learn about the candidates before voting speaks volumes about the voters of Cambridge. – Robert Winters
Hi CCJF or Robert,
Do you have the “Ranking Analysis”, which shows how candidates were ranked on citywide ballots?
Best,
Tom Stohlman
Perennial Candidate for Cambridge City Council
Comment by Tom Stohlman — November 20, 2011 @ 8:53 am
Perhaps I’ll do that today. Any other requests?
Comment by Robert Winters — November 20, 2011 @ 9:44 am
I did some more ballot analysis today. What I found most interesting was how the popularity of School Committee candidates changes when you look at #1 votes vs. Top 2 rankings vs. Top 3, etc. This is the last page (page 9) of the posted PDF.
Alice Turkel is the most popular candidate according to all measures beyond just #1 votes.
If you count candidates who were listed either #1, #2, or #3, Fred Fantini (the top in #1 votes) does not make it into the top six among all candidates.
For the City Council (page 8), Leland Cheung tops the ticket by every measure of popularity.
Comment by Robert Winters — November 20, 2011 @ 3:05 pm
I’d be interested in knowing whether you found a correlation between length of time by visitors to a candidate page during few days leading up to the election and the number of votes received. Of course there are many types of confounding factors (namely some incumbents didn’t complete a page). I view this as a follow-on to the assertion that Cambridge voters are educating themselves on the stances of candidates.
I want to publicly thank you for maintaining this civic resource. Even before I filled my page in, I was directing voters to the Cambridge Civic Journal so they could educate themselves in as unbiased a way as possible.
Minka vB
Comment by Minka vanBeuzekom — November 22, 2011 @ 11:08 am
There was a correlation between visits to the candidate pages and how well candidates fared (especially challengers) in the actual election. You have to filter out other factors such as the fact that many people who would give a #1 to Fred Fantini probably are not consulting Candidate Pages. Also, some candidates actively directed people to their page and others did not. I was pretty certain that Minka vB and Mervan Osborne would be elected because of their popularity on the Candidate Pages (even though Minka was a bit late in submitting). I was predicting for weeks that Leland would top the ticket and everyone told me I was crazy. The pictures alone create a measure of interest even without reading what the candidates have to say.
Here are some of the Council hits I had the day before the election:
Leland Cheung 1806
Minka vanBeuzekom 1552
Matt Nelson 1402
James Williamson 1363
Marjorie Decker 1358
Henrietta Davis 1354
David Maher 1300
Craig Kelley 1293
Sam Seidel 1263
Larry Ward 1258
Tom Stohlman 1251
Jamake Pascual 1251
Charles Marquardt 1223
Gary Mello 1194
Gregg Moree 1101
Denise Simmons 1082
Ken Reeves 1009
Tim Toomey 1009
It’s clear that the popularity (and electability) of some candidates is barely related to the Candidate Pages, but there’s strong connection among those voters who are more Internet oriented. Also, someone like James Williamson was going to get hits because he was perceived as a “character”.
For the School Committee, here are the day-before numbers:
Mervan Osborne 1448
Joyce Gerber 1052
Nancy Tauber 1008
Richard Harding 918
Marc McGovern 913
Bill Forster 913
Patty Nolan 895
John Holland 868
Alice Turkel 850
Fred Fantini 848
Charles Stead 535
It’s hard to draw too many conclusions from these numbers other than the fact that Fantini voters don’t consult their computers too regularly, and that Mervan’s popularity was apparent. A major factor in this and every other School Committee election is its volatility – voters will freely switch their #1 vote based on perceptions that their candidate is either vulnerable or “safe”. I believe that in this election, Patty Nolan was perceived as vulnerable and her voters rallied around her, and that Nancy Tauber was perceived as safe and many of her voters tried other candidates. I would also say that Alice Turkel’s voters were pretty solidly with her regardless of perceptions of safety or vulnerability.
Comment by Robert Winters — November 22, 2011 @ 11:47 am
As much as it may hurt, you should list the hits on all the candidates.
Tom Stohlman
Perennial Candidate for Cambridge City Council
Comment by Tom Stohlman — November 29, 2011 @ 7:10 am
I updated the hits to include all the candidates. Keep in mind that a candidate such as Jamake Pascual received a lot more hits than expected due to some negative press and blog postings.
Comment by Robert Winters — November 29, 2011 @ 8:40 am