Analysis of Measure P

This isn't much, but I bothered going through the precinct data and figured I'd type it up in case anyone finds it interesting.

Basically, there wasn't a whole lot of variation across the city. Measure P went down in flames, with no precinct voting higher than 35% for it, and the lowest a miserable 16%, a 19% swing. Turnout was just under 30%, which makes any deeper interpretation of the broader electorate rather unreliable. Still, there was some slight variation, and it clumped, as I expected, by neighborhood.

The strongest votes against P were to be found in two places: first, those who lived closest to the proposed development (ironically, also those with the greatest say in its design process), in Wildhorse and across Covell near Slide Hill park; second, in the traditional Progressive base neighborhoods of central Davis north of campus and downtown.

The strongest votes for P (such as they were) were similarly inflected by neighborhood: South Davis, Far West Davis (ie. everything west of 113), and the apartment-heavy southern part of North Davis near Marketplace and along Catalina Ave. Some of this overlaps with the parts of town that voted for Measure K (ie. Target) a couple of years ago, but this should not be overstated: P got blown clear out of the water in all of those neighborhoods as well, just by a somewhat smaller margin.

The biggest story of the election, in my opinion, was how few people voted at all. I suspect a lot of the nonvoters did so for reasons related to the no votes (irritation with the process, unimpressed with the proposal, didn't find it necessary to build at this moment), but I am wary of ascribing that absence of action to much of a deeper political sympathy with the slow growth/no growth Progressive take on housing issues. Example A: The strong showing of Moderates on the City Council following a 60-40 rejection of Measure X.

As with Target and Covell Village, I believe that majorities in Davis on such matters are built from weird, unstable, often incoherent coalitions of voters, and that perception of fair play/good government concerns are a much larger factor than most political debate (either online or in the letters to the editor section of the Enterprise) would suggest. If you're going to try and buy an election, you should probably be careful to cloak it with a local volunteer effort, as Target did successfully with Measure K. If Davis voters feel like they're being pushed around, (see also: PG&E, Covell Village, and Chris Cabaldon), they tend to backlash pretty hard.

Mostly, I would hope that this election will caution people against calling more special elections on mundane stuff like this. I dont know about anyone else, but Iam getting rather tired of the permanent revolution of special elections, 15 by my count just since 2002.This is exactly the sort of issue that should have been delayed and put on a consolidated election.