Welch Versus Wong – East Versus West
Being a number cruncher at heart, I had already downloaded the precinct level election results. I had already crunched some numbers, looking for a correlation between this election effort and strategy and the 2009 election. I decided to do a graphical mash-up of the precinct map and the top vote winner in each precinct.
The maps are at the bottom of the article. First, lets play with some numbers.
- 25984 votes cast in 2013
- 25788 votes cast in 2009
196 more votes cast in 2013 (7 tenths of 1 percent)
2013
- Votes for Stoker – 6246 (24.04%)
- Votes for Wong – 7359 (28.32%)
- Votes for Welch – 6962 (26.79%)
- Votes for King – 5417 (20.85%)
2009
- Votes for Stoker – 5344 (20.72%)
- Votes for Wong – 6065 (23.52%)
- Votes for Christy Miller – 2036 7.90%
The total votes cast in 2013 are nearly the same as 2009 (less than 1% increase (196 more). In 2009, 14379 voters wanted someone other than Stoker or Wong and in 2013, 12343 voted for someone other than Stoker and Wong. In 2009, Democrat Christy Miller won 2036 votes in a field of 10 candidates. Lets assume the Christy Miller votes would have went to Stoker or Wong in a 2013 field with just two challengers (conservatives).
get ready to have your mind blown…..
Lets say Christy Miller did not run in 2009. If we take the 2036 Christy Miller votes and give them to Stoker or Wong or in other words, take them out of the 2009 “any one but Stoker & Wong” total, the number of people that wanted anyone BUT Stoker and Wong is exactly the same…12,343 (14,379 – 2036 = 12343)
- 2013 anyone but Stoker & Wong – 12343
- 2009 anyone but Miller & Stoker & Wong – 12343
Aren’t numbers fun?
If you assume the Stoker increase from 5344 to 6246 (902 more votes) came from the Christy Miller Votes, that leaves 1134. Add those remaining 1134 votes to Wong’s 6065 and you get 7199 and then add the 196 additional votes for 2013 versus 2009 and you get 7395. That’s just 36 more than Lee Wong’s total of 7359 votes. In other words, The core support for Stoker and Wong team or a Democrat/Progressive support for direction of the Board of Trustees doesn’t seem to be much different than 2009.
I realize these interpolations are unscientific, anecdotal at best. We have no way of knowing how many of the 25k plus voters are the same for both election years or if the Christy Miller voters would have gone for Stoker and Wong. In the weeks before the election, I thought about exit polling. I didn’t know the election laws for exit polling and since I had helped with the Welch campaign I figured I wasn’t allowed. I’d like to see some polling numbers for our Township in the future but I know it would need to be a grassroots effort. We are way too small to garner any media attention.
The Map Comparison
It’s pretty clear from the two precinct maps that Mark Welch’s victory was really a head to head battle with Catherine Stoker. He did well against Lee Wong in Beckett Ridge, almost matching him vote for vote. Of the 5 primarily Beckett Ridge precincts (Precincts 13, 14, 23, 24 and 25), Mark Welch was just 57 votes under Lee Wong’s total. He lost one Becket Ridge precinct by a single vote, another by 5 and another by 7. He took 2nd place by stealing wins from Stoker on the East side of the Township. I cannot help but think back to a 2009 victory comment by Stoker to the Journal News, that she hoped to use the next four years on redeveloping the US 42 corridor. Perhaps the residents on the South East side of West Chester remembered her failed promises.
2013 Map
