On March 10, the Santa Fe City Council will adopt the official results of
last week's municipal elections
. We've pasted those results below the jump for all the local political junkies to pore over, and the new issue of SFR that hits the streets this week day will contain a mini-analysis of voter turnout—which was
piss-poor
.
Actually, turnout was
slightly
than expected
—which perhaps should be no surprise, considering the leading daily's
of the race.
The consequence of such low participation figures is easy to understand:
People don't feel invested in their government
.
As the Journal North's Jackie Jadrnak
wrote over the post-election weekend
:
There's a problem with analyses that blame low turnout on voter apathy or uninspiring candidates:
Turnout wasn't low everywhere
.
Indeed, turnout was over 60 percent in some parts of District 1, which includes many of the wealthier neighborhoods in the north hills, and saw a three-way Council race.
Demographics may play a bigger role
than the dailies cared to acknowledge in their post-election analyses.
And no—"demographics" isn't just code for "race," although that's certainly a factor. Age and income appear to also play a role in who gets involved in Santa Fe politics.
For instance, the turnout in consolidated precincts 35 and 74—encompassing the College of Santa Fe—was only 17.5 percent. That is, of 1,566 registered voters in those two precincts, only 274 people cast a vote for mayor. Even fewer—209—bothered to vote for District 4 Councilor Ron Trujillo, who ran unopposed.
Precinct maps are available here at the
. Below are recent stats on voter registration, as well as the March 2 municipal election results.
Please, run some numbers yourself, and see what you come up with.
The fact that
Mayor David Coss didn't lose a single precinct
anywhere in the city—despite the low overall turnout—suggests he had a clearly superior get-out-the vote campaign to motivate that minority of voters who could be bothered with local politics. Across Cerrillos Road from the
shopping center, in precinct 34 around Salazar Elementary, Coss even managed to pull as many votes as incumbent District 3 Councilor Carmichael Dominguez.
Third-place mayoral candidate
Miguel Chavez
managed to tie Asenath Kepler for second place in only one precinct
—that is, precinct 33, a diverse and relatively youthful neighborhood East of Baca Street that, incidentally, had apparently the
lowest turnout in the city
.
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