Blogtown, PDX

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Election 2008 Calling it for Charles Lewis

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz on Wed, May 21 at 1:17 PM

Okay, so I’ve geeked out with elections numbers. And I can say with quite a lot of certainty that Charles Lewis will face Amanda Fritz in November.

Bear with me through the math. The wonk level here is HIGHLY elevated.

According to Multnomah County Elections, there are about 25,000 ballots left to count. That seems like plenty for Bissonnette to catch up to Lewis—he’s currently in third and only 623 behind, and since 10:40 last night, Bissonnette pulled in a larger chunk of every new drop of election results (377 to Lewis’ 349 of the last set, for example).

But only about 64 percent of voters are casting a vote in this race. That means there’s just 16,046 votes left in this race, roughly. If Bissonnette and Lewis each nab a chunk in line with the percentage they picked up overnight (where Bissonnette took 14.17 percent to Lewis’ 13.52), Lewis still wins by 519 votes.

If, instead, the last 16K votes drop in for Bissonnette at the highest rate he’s picked up over the last six batches of numbers we’ve seen—14.55 percent—and the lowest Lewis has had, which is 11.5 percent, then Lewis still wins, by a close 134. (If Branam, who was in second place much of last night, follows his overnight trend while Lewis and Bissonnette also do, he ends up in fourth, 463 votes behind Bissonnette. If he pulls in numbers like his current best set—at 12.89 percent—he’s still in fourth, by 444.)

By my calculations, if the trends of their last set of numbers hold, there would need to be 120,000 outstanding ballots for Bissonnette to catch up to Lewis and face Fritz.

Or, if the trends change in those 16K or so votes left in this race, Bissonnette needs to hope the rest of Lewis’ come in at his low-end 11.5 percent—and Bissonnette would need 15.4 put him just into second place. Bissonnette has yet to post numbers like that, so I’m going to call that unlikely. (These numbers don’t reflect the handful of votes in this race from Clackamas or Washington county, where Branam has 57, Lewis 53, and Bissonnette 16—to Fritz’ 227.)

In other words, congrats Charles!

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Comments

Is Lewis going the public campaign financing route? I've forgotten. Congrats to him beating out the other five sausage party contenders, truly, but the fact is that he still lost by over 30%. Making the public pay for a second campaign when he just got his ass handed to him would make him a dick of the highest order. If he's privately financed, however, then full steam ahead, knock yourself out.

Posted by Jon | May 21, 2008 1:59 PM

Yes, he's publicly financed.

To say he 'lost' would indicate that someone 'won.' No one won this race last night, which is why there's a runoff. If everyone who didn't vote for Amanda Fritz chooses Charles Lewis, he walks away with 57 percent of the vote in November.

Posted by Amy J. Ruiz | May 21, 2008 2:25 PM

Wait, you mean to tell me that 100-43=57 and 57>43?? Thanks for the math lesson.

In my opinion, getting only 12% actually does mean you "lost" when the person ahead of you got almost four times as many votes as you. We're not talking 43%-35% here. We're talking four times more.

If he were privately funded, fine, no problems at all, he can do whatever he wants with his (and his backers') money. But to take money from you and I to run his campaign based on 12% support and a 31% defeat is to steal from both you and I.

And since you threw out an unrealistic, exaggerated hypothetical scenario of Lewis getting every single vote that didn't go for Fritz, I'll throw out my own unrealistic, exaggerated, hypothetical scenario. If 52 people ran for the same position, one person got 49% and the others all got 1%, yes, I'd say the first person "won."

50%+1 may be the law, the rule, and a good idea in theory, but that doesn't mean it's right or not a stupid course in actual practice. For starters, a candidate's percent in the primary election should be at least half of what the top vote earner garnered, for example. That seems at the very least like a common sense minimum. In this case, requiring Lewis to have received 22% doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Posted by Jon | May 21, 2008 3:47 PM

Wow, what a disappointment. I would have voted for Branam, Bissonnette or Smith in the runoff, but not Lewis. It's odd to think that I'll be voting for Fritz in November! I saw some clips of Lewis in Ghana on cable access, trying to explain urban renewal districts by drawing in the dirt with a stick... and wow, he knows less than any college student who has taken an intro class. He's just a confused, hippie cynic; Fritz might be somewhat reactionary too, but at least she's got public health and neighborhoods on her mind.

Posted by Elliot | May 22, 2008 11:23 AM

Posted by Elliot | May 22, 2008 11:25 AM

Elliot, he seems like he knows what he's talking about to me. He graduated with a masters from one of the toughest graduate programs in the country. I believe he was just trying to explain it in a clear concise way. He's got my vote. I think its odd that you would be voting for Fritz too!

Posted by Thomas | May 26, 2008 4:51 PM