NumbersCentral: Who Placed What & Where?

In the May 3rd Danville City Council election, there were 18 different precincts reporting in to make the final vote total. In this NumbersCentral analysis of the results, we’re going to see who did what and where they did it. (That’s probably horrible grammar, but so be it.)

We’ve taken the time to go over each individual precinct and figure out which candidates placed first, second and so on down through eleventh place. If there was a tie for a specific place, each candidate got credit for the place and the next place was two slots lower (as in a tie for third place would mean the next person in the rankings gets fifth place). In this analysis, we’re treating absentee ballots as their separate precinct.

Let’s take a look at the voter precinct map for a quick reference…

And now, let’s look at the “Who Placed What & Where” analysis…

Let’s break it down left to right on a Big Board. Did I say BreakDown? Heh.

• Sheila Baynes: She never had a chance with her strategy of appealing to the black voting bloc. That never caught on and she ran out of time to try to capture any support from anybody else. Her best placings of 5th and 6th were at three of the bottom four precincts in voter turnout.
• Larry Campbell: Four 1st place finishes & three 2nd place finishes meant an easy win for Campbell. His weak spot was the Westover area, but it didn’t bother the final numbers.
• Robin Dabney: She was consistently beating Sheila Baynes & Thomas Motley, but that was about all. Just like Baynes, her best placings came from the predominantly black precincts that didn’t turn out many voters.
• Philip Haley: Haley did a good job with consistent 4th and 5th place spots in the precincts that turned out the majority of the votes, but his level of black vote support was actually lower than Fred Shanks’ was. Again, those precincts didn’t turn out many voters so that didn’t hurt him in the end. But if had gotten black vote support, he could have easily knocked off Fred Shanks for the 5th and final spot.
• Jim Lindley: Lindley’s best placing came at his home Park Avenue precinct. After that, he took a serious beating. 8th place finishes at the two biggest precincts (Ballou Park & American Legion) were fatal wounds.
• Trina McLaughlin: McLaughlin was consistent in all of Danville. She had three 3rd place finishes and never finished lower than eighty. But it’s the same story for McLaughlin as a lot of candidates. she failed to place high in the precincts where the majority of the voters cast ballots.
• Thomas Motley: Two 3rd place finishes, but 10 bottom-two performances as well. Motley got almost zero of the white vote, but he never campaigned for the white vote anyway. Motley hasn’t changed that tactic in his four losses, so we’ll see if he catches on in 2018. Yes, of course he’s going to run in 2018.
• Sherman Saunders: Four gold medals, five silvers and a bronze. Easy win. He doesn’t have a lot of crossover support in Westover, but he still finished 6th there.
• Fred Shanks: Shanks went all the way from 2nd place finishes down to 10th place finishes and still won his seat back. He did it by being Fred Shanks. He didn’t need much black voting support and he didn’t get much black voting support. He got just a little more than Philip Haley did in those precincts, and that was enough.
• Lee Vogler: Five wins, four 2nd places and two 3rd places made for a dominant night. His 6th & 7th place finishes came at the precincts where the votes were diddlysquat anyway. Solid campaign, solid support, solid results.
• Madison Whittle: A first-time candidate gets three 1st place finishes. That’s amazing. Two 2nd places, three 3rd places and three 4th place finishes completed a big night for him.

Can you tell we love working with numbers and doing political analysis here at SouthsideCentral?

Thanks for reading the most detailed analysis of the May 3rd Danville City Council election… and it’s only here at SouthsideCentral!