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Turnout was lower than anticipated on the D
side, with 67,880 voters casting their ballots in the D primary. Granted, we don’t have the AVs and
Provisionals in yet, but I was expecting something closer to 75,000 Election
Day ballots to be cast.
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I believe favorable weather helped bring out
some medium-propensity voters, which boosted the tally to north of 67K, otherwise,
we would have witnessed even lower turnout.
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This is why I don’t do predictions pieces (I
have written on this subject previously).
While “fun,” they aren’t based on sound science.
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While I got the top 10 right (which wasn’t that
difficult a challenge) and I was within 2% of the final numbers for five of the
top 10 candidates, I missed Mfume’s numbers by a wide margin. Why? A few reasons leap out:
o
Frankly, I expected older voters (who make up a disproportionate
percentage of special election electorates) to split between Mfume, Branch, and
Jalisi. The campaigns of the latter two, combined, accounted for not even 3% of the vote (combined, my last predictions piece had
them at 14%). So that is 11% right
there.
o
I thought the “Change” vote would lead to
stronger performances by relatively newer faces, such as Terri Hill. While her campaign was solid in Howard County
(placing first), she was crushed in Baltimore and also trailed by a wide margin
in Baltimore County. She needed to run
up big numbers in HoCo and be competitive in Baltimore (City and County) and
that just didn’t happen this time around.
o
While the Carter campaign did well (a familiar name
in a sizable percentage of the district), I believe some of her vote went to Mfume
(despite the distinct insurgent/establishment positionings) while Rockeymoore
Cummings also slightly over-performed by a couple of percentage points over my
final projections. I think some of that vote
went from Carter to MRC.
Those are my initial thoughts on this most special
of primaries.
In solidarity.
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