Rockville Election Vote Analysis
Schrack: Slates, negative campaigning and money played into election results.
Campaign signs posted Nov. 8 in front of the Rockville Swim and Fitness, a polling place for the city election, were signs of Election Day.
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Photos
Pdfs (1)
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Editor's note:
Read Roald Schrack's detailed analysis of Rockville's 2011 election results by clicking the PDF at the right of this note.
Schrack analyzes voter turnout and voting patterns in the 2011 polling and draws his own conclusions about what they say about candidate slates, negative campaigning, money and the literacy of the electorate.
On Monday, Schrack was one of seven residents recognized by the City of Rockville with a Good Neighbor Award. He was recognized "for his intellectual, political, and financial contributions to all Rockville residents."
Schrack formerly contributed analysis pieces to the now-defunct Rockville Central site. We welcome his contributions to Rockville Patch.
-Sean Sedam, Editor, Rockville Patch
Peter Mork
11:19 am on Thursday, December 1, 2011
I respectfully disagree that these data suggest a strong "slate" effect. The largest correlation is 0.69 (Marcuccio/Newton), but this correlation accounts for less than half of the observed voting variance. The Gajewski/Pierzchala correlation was almost as strong, but didn't translate into a victory for Gajewski. Moreover, the table omits several strong correlations: Gajewski/Francis (at 0.84) and Marcuccio/Trahan (at 0.86), most of whom lost. Perhaps the most salient observation is that nearly a quarter of Marcuccio's votes can be explained by the Marcuccio/Hall correlation of 0.45 (compared to the -0.49 correlation for Gajewski/Hall).
Thus, I think it fair to recognize two fairly weak clusters of candidates: Gajewski/Moore/Pierzchala and Marcuccio/Newton/Hall. Given that most of these candidates won, it is perhaps fair to conclude that a weak slate is enough to push a candidate over the top.