At first glance, the final results of Tuesday’s mayoral election looked strikingly similar to those of the 2011 mayoral election: A tight race with a 45/55 citywide vote split. A deeper look at the numbers reveals that New Haven neighborhoods were far more polarized this time.
Two years ago, petitioning candidate Jeffrey Kerekes had a surprisingly strong showing against incumbent Democrat John DeStefano in the general mayoral election after the two participated in a four-way Democratic primary. The two candidates were separated by only 10 percentage points.
This year, petitioning candidate Justin Elicker also surprised people with his strong showing against a longtime, well-known, better-funded endorsed Democrat, Toni Harp, in the general mayoral election after the two participated in a four-way Democratic primary. Percentage-wise, the outcome was almost identical to 2011’s.
But while Kerekes and DeStefano ran relatively closely in each of the city’s 30 wards in 2011, the 2013 election saw a marked increase in the number of landslide ward victories.
The numbers portray an increasingly polarized city. While the city as a whole split fairly close to evenly between the candidates, on the ward level many neighborhoods showed an overwhelming preference for one candidate or the other.
In 2011, only four wards had a margins of victory of 30 percent or greater.
In 2013, the margin was 30 percent or greater in 23 wards. Four wards had margins of 70 percent or more.
If you consider the margins not as a percentage, but in terms of the number of votes cast, the contrast is even starker. In 2011, only two wards had margins of victory of over 200 votes. In 2013, 20 wards had 200-plus margins of victory.
The average margin of victory per ward in 2013 was 20 percentage points higher than in 2011. And in number of votes cast, the margin more than tripled.
That’s partly because there were far more votes cast in 2013 than in 2011: 15,457 in 2011, 20,769 in 2013. Elicker, who lost Tuesday’s election, earned more votes than DeStefano did in 2011 when he won reelection.
Another way to interpret the change: In 2011, two white men were vying for the mayor’s office, which meant that the candidates’ race and gender were less of a factor. In this year’s contest, between a white man and a black woman, race or gender may have contributed to the polarization. (The race saw many other issues raised, as well, including the difference between “insider” and “outsider” politics as well as personal attacks on Harp and her family.)
Of the 10 wards with the highest margins of victory, the top seven were black or Latino-dominated wards, and went for Harp. That includes Newhallville’s Ward 20, West River’s Ward 23, and the Hill’s Wards 3, 4 and 5.
As in the primary, Elicker couldn’t find traction in black-dominated neighborhoods. Harp, meanwhile, didn’t win over white voters in Morris Cove and was outpaced in Westville and on Elicker’s home turf in East Rock.
This chart shows the number of votes cast for each candidate in each ward in 2013. Elicker found his largest landslide victories in Ward 10, which he represents on the Board of Aldermen, and in Morris Cove’s Ward 18, which is largely white.
Comparing the 2013 and 2011 ward-by-ward vote counts reveals one simliarity between Elicker’s results and those of Kerekes and DeStefano: The three men all had Wards 18 and 25 as their top two wards in terms of votes won. (Note: This is not a perfect comparison, because since 2011, ward redistricting changed the boundaries of many wards to varying degrees.)
Neither Kerekes nor DeStefano, however, relied quite as heavily on 18 and 25 as Elicker did. Ward-by-ward breakdowns show that Kerekes and DeStefano ran relatively close in most of the city’s wards. Their votes were relatively spread out among the wards. Elicker garnered nearly a quarter of his total votes in Wards 18 and 25 alone, outpacing Harp in those two wards by crushing margins.
Unlike for Elicker, Kerekes, and DeStefano, Ward 18 didn’t even make Harp’s top-10 list of most supportive wards. And Ward 25 was down at number eight on her list.
Harp instead lit up Dixwell, Newhallville and Beaver Hills, among other areas. Wards in those three neighborhoods were among the five that delivered her the most votes Tuesday. They didn’t play as large a factor in the 2011 mayor’s race.
This map shows New Haven by race, based on census information, by way of the University of Virginia.
General Maps Same As Primary
Harp’s voter turnout map shows the role that Newhallville’s Ward 20 played in her win, along with the broad support she found citywide.
Both Harp’s and Elicker’s general election turnout maps look similar to their primary election turnout maps.
General.
Primary.
And the map of ward majorities won by the candidates was exactly the same in the primary as it was in the general.
The two candidates’ turnout maps are also fairly similar to those of their running mates, the candidates for city clerk.
Smart dominated in Wooster Square’s Ward 8, the area he represents on the Board of Aldermen.
All the maps share similarities with the overall voter turnout map, of course. Westville’s Wards 25 and 26 and Morris Cove’s Ward 18 had high turnout, as usual. Wards 19 and 20 had proportionately weaker showings than they did in the primary. (Those wards had contested aldermanic races in the primary, but not in the general election.) Voter turnout was again low in the Hill and in Fair Haven.
Harp’s campaign ran roughly as efficiently overall as it did in the primary, when she raised $43.32 per vote. As of Oct. 27, Harp had raised $503,496, including money raised in the primary. That amounts to $44.35 raised per vote. If you factor in the $58,000 that AFSCME put into the race, it goes up to $49.46 per vote.
Elicker gained efficiency between the general and the primary. He raised $49.95 per vote in the primary election, and just $32.76 per vote he earned in the general election.