2015 ELECTION: Mapping the City Council District 1 vote

(Click image for zoomable view)
Though the City Council District 1 race isn’t officially settled yet, and won’t be until after the recount, now that the election is certified, precinct-by-precinct results are available, and that’s what you see in the map above. It was made by Ben Anderstone, a political consultant with Progressive Strategies NW, who granted our request for permission to republish it here. The tones are green for Shannon Braddock and red for Lisa Herbold, on a graded scale, so that the lightest of each is closest to the almost exactly 50-50 split that the election became on a raw numbers basis. In all, per the final results sheet from the county (page 45), 45 percent of the registered voters in District 1 – West Seattle and South Park – returned their ballots. That’s 27,757 ballots out of 60,991 registered voters; almost 10 percent of them – 2,714 of them did not include a vote in this particular race.

M November 26, 2015 (6:04 am)

Who is casting their vote from terminal 5?

acemotel November 26, 2015 (8:20 am)

precinct 34-1493, which includes terminal 5, also includes the neighborhood close to the health club and steel plant. http://your.kingcounty.gov/elections/gis/maps/cities/2015/scc1.pdf

redblack November 26, 2015 (8:35 am)

M: the neighbors of the people who live on harbor island.

briznoe November 26, 2015 (9:48 am)

That’s the precinct for Pigeon Point.

acemotel November 26, 2015 (10:29 am)

Pigeon Point is with Harbor Island 34-1494

dsa November 26, 2015 (11:10 am)

I must be color blind. It looks like a Braddock win.

WSB November 26, 2015 (11:15 am)

I almost wrote this into the story but … the acreage doesn’t correspond to numbers. Just precincts. And some have far more acreage than others but not necessarily more people (Harbor Island, as discussed above, and then there are sections with parkland such as the golf course, Camp Long, Lincoln Park, and so on) … TR

Diane November 26, 2015 (11:38 am)

so true about acreage; Ben did maps for all districts; the map for D-3 has HUGE dark red square for Pamela Banks, in the district where Kshama won by 56%; that giant square is mansions/land where just a handful of rich people live; down in the Cental area where the poor people live, far more dense filled with Kshama voters

I. Ponder November 26, 2015 (12:20 pm)

So many people didn’t bother to vote. Still, I’m certain they have opinions on all sorts of things they are willing to whine about. Regarding % who voted but didn’t vote in this particular race, in the few instances where I couldn’t decide between candidates (like School Board) I opted to not vote in that race rather than randomly choose. Is that wrong?

WSB November 26, 2015 (12:30 pm)

Nothing’s “wrong” … after all, while we have the right to vote, we aren’t legally required to. I look at it from one perspective … for all the forums and interviews, maybe there still wasn’t enough information, or it wasn’t presented in the best way, to really help people see the difference. At one forum where I was a question-asker/moderator, I did ask a question of them about how to help voters differentiate them. Ultimately, that might have been the subject of an entire story/forum/something. OTOH, the issue might be even bigger than that … and I asked this question at the Youngstown forum … what will it take for those who don’t vote at all (might not even be registered) to care? Or to believe it matters? – TR

acemotel November 26, 2015 (12:52 pm)

I was just talking about this with my partner a few days ago. There was a time in our lives when we were very poor. We were busy working, trying to finish school, working out our relationship issues, shuffling my child to school and childcare, worrying about a million things having to do with survival, taking care of a sick parent, etc etc, that I doubt we even knew WHO was on city council, much less vote for them. Not to excuse myself, but I understand how people can be cut off from the political process. It’s not always a priority (and I know all the shoulds, musts, and principles about how every vote counts) Ironically, we both became policy wonks in our later professional lives, but that was many years later.
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If voting were mandatory, people would be forced to make an effort (but not necessarily to research and pay attention). We require a driver’s license to drive a car, a marriage license to marry, food permits to serve food, and so on. I don’t know what the answer is….

dsa November 26, 2015 (1:07 pm)

I understand the density/precinct variances and that is exactly why I made my observation above.

Jordan November 27, 2015 (7:57 am)

Isn’t each box approximately the same population? Seems that by box count it is more green than red, but then you have to determine the shading as one are going further one way or the other will carry more weight than another that is just a bit to one side of the 50/50 split.

WSB November 27, 2015 (8:33 am)

I haven’t found “precinct population” info yet. Maybe someone hyperpolitical who is lurking out there will know where to find that. But here’s the closeup map with precinct ID #s: http://your.kingcounty.gov/elections/gis/maps/cities/2015/scc1.pdf

Casey November 27, 2015 (12:55 pm)

That red and green line you see down the middle, that’s rich vs poor right there. If you dont think so and live on the west side of 35th, come take a walk on the east side of Delridge.

Kathy November 27, 2015 (1:37 pm)

You can get registered voters per precinct (as of the day before the election?) from the link in the story to the results data base by looking at the “CounterType” (filter for type Registered Voters) and “SumofCount” columns. But that does not reflect total population of course.

Sorry, comment time is over.