For the first time in City of Santa Clarita history, SCVTalk presents for you a precinct-by-precinct results map of the 2010 City of Santa Clarita Council Election:
View Council Election 2010 – Incumbents in a larger map
All credit to SCVTalk reader Mike D. of Saugus, who painstakingly inputed data from election result PDFs and somehow created the beautiful map above.
How to Read the Map:
Purple precincts are ones in which a challenger such as David Gauny or TimBen Boydston got the most votes. Green districts are ones where incumbents placed first, and yellow districts were ones that I suppose we could call “battleground” precincts.
Some Observations:
- Boydston and Gauny were strong in the older parts of Newhall, Valencia, Canyon Country and Saugus. Areas around Seco Canyon, South of Lyons, and Sierra Highway/Soledad/14 Nexus, and McBean. What is the population like in these precincts? Older? Empty nesters? Long time residents?
- In contrast, the incumbents were quite strong in the newer areas of town like North Valencia, Plum Canyon, and deeper parts of Canyon Country. What are these voters like? New homeowners? Young children?
- It’s interesting to compare the results of adjacent precincts. For instance, look at the spread between Gauny and Ferry in Precinct 1 and 17 (roughly divided by Valencia Blvd). In Precinct 17, Ferry had 19.5% of the vote, the highest and Gauny scored 7 points behind that with 12.3%. Indeed, Gauny finished behind Boydston. But just down the street in Precinct 1, Gauny dominated with 23.4% of the vote, 10 points ahead of Ferry. Obviously this is the Summit neighborhood adjacent to the hospital, but why such a large difference?
- Looks like Bob Kellar’s support for Gauny wasn’t enough to put him into first place in the Sand Canyon neighborhood, but he certainly did well there anyway (finishing behind Weste).
- Boydston won two precincts: Old Orchard neighborhood and SoLy, the area bounded by I-5 on the west and Valley Street (roughly) on the east. He also tied with Gauny for first place in the Placerita Canyon/Circle J ranch precinct
- Look how strong Ferry was in North Valencia, Laurie Ender’s neck of the woods
- In the precincts where Ferry lost, he didn’t lose by that much. Only a few dozen votes in any of these precincts would have swung the election to Gauny
- Newhall, you disappoint me. Only 14.1% of registered voters turned out. On the other hand, check out the Summit neighborhood, the place where Gauny dominated. Only 15.2% turnout. In North Valencia, Ferry’s stronghold, there was 21.2% turnout
- Sand Canyon Precinct gets the “We’re not that Lazy!” award. Only 57% of you voted by mail, meaning 43% of you actually went to the trouble to get in your car (or mount your pony) and ride to the polling station like Normal Americans do. In other precincts Vote By Mail amounted to 70+ % of the vote!
What conclusions and/or observations do you draw from this excellent map? Compare/contrast these results with earlier elections. Are we emerging into de facto Council districts, or was this election just a fluke? Debate and Discuss. (sorry I just finished a class and I’m in testing mode right now).
MANY thanks to Mike D. for the wonderful map and the hard work.
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I have to laugh that the ‘zone’ for my kids old school (Foster, off Pamplico) is purple. A group there in the older homes (Benelli? Not sure how it’s spelled) is pissed about a neighborhood beautification that took place in their neighborhood (and the aftermath) and lead a ‘vote for anyone but the incumbents’ campaign around the local mommysphere. Looks like their efforts were a local success.
The story of the election is now clear. David Gauny AND TimBen absolutely tank in the four precincts (6, 126, 11 and 17) that comprise Northbridge, Northbridge Pointe, Bridgeport and Northpark. The usurpers once again come out to decide the election like they did in 2008 generating over 20% of the total votes cast and a turnout significantly in excess of mean. Ignore the usurpers at your own peril.
The neighborhoods where people are happy voted strongly for the incumbents. The people of north valencia live in such a beautiful, wonderful and perfect place (they know they put the “awesome” in Awesometown) that not even the Decoro four lane/two lane/bike lane/four line/ crisis could put a dent in their positive mojo.
The neighborhoods where people are unhappy about particular issues voted for the challengers (hospital expansion, Calgrove project, Casden project, code enforcement preventing them from paving their front lawn and placing a 1970′s trans am on blocks, cut through traffic, etc).
Many of these issues will abate and other issue will emerge over the next two years so it is possible different voting patters will emerge depending on the issues, the candidates and the campaigns they run. In other words, past performance does not necessarily predict future results.
Also, the Ghost of Ferry past looms large in the 91354 – the Ferry-Ender nexus. There are a lot of VHS parents that remember his spirited advocacy of the new high school and its surrounding communities. After a decade of goodwill-building, he’s had a few years in the wilderness. People in other parts of the city have less to go on. Notice how he does less swimmingly in the Hart High-feeding areas of 91355?
A lot to digest here. For a colors coded based on the winner: http://bit.ly/9sWvfp
I find it really interesting how Ferry and McLean (to a lesser extent) won so many contiguous districts.
A few interesting observations:
- Alan Ferdman was unable to deliver “Whites Canyon Country” for Boydston or Gauny. Even his neighbors are tired of listening to Ferdman.
- Bob Kellar was unable to deliver a big margin in Sand Canyon for Gauny.
- Gauny, Ferry, McLean and Weste all finished first in their home precincts.
- Boydston finished 5th in his home precinct.
It was obvious as hell that voters worked hard to rid this city of Frank Ferry, and came close to doing just that with two newbies. Marsha’s worthlessness works for her, she does nothing so doesn’t cause a stir. Laurene is as corrupt as Frank, but even though she is one sly package and must work hard to keep her seat, she always manages. Frank won this election, but barely, which still makes him a loser, considering how close he came to losing to Gauny who didn’t have much money.
Bob Kellar obviously doesn’t have much clout in Sand Canyon, so he needs to stop trying to be a king-maker if he can’t even move his own neighbors enough to support him. Apparently, Kellar’s illegal immigration stand isn’t enough to push him into king-maker status even in his own stomping ground.
Frank is a loser even with a win! People are so sick of him, he almost lost his seat. G&L may have bought another election, but Frank still needs to wake up to how much people dislike him.
Newer districts work for incumbents, so the more annexations there are the better it is for incumbents. People new to the city are clueless and believe all the incumbent BS and lies.
Having walked and talked to neighbors throughout precinct 11 I’m really disappointed to see the results.
Jim:
You had an impact, because Gauny and Boydston did not tank AS badly in precinct 11 as they did in the neighboring precincts.
New Valencia doesn’t share Gauny’s racial resentment, for one.
I haven’t checked lately, but in 2007 when Helmers Elementary in the heart of North River was at the top of the API league tables locally 30 percent of the students had a Latin surname. These successful folks of Latin heritage will end up the bane of Republicans, since, rightly or wrongly, they interpret the efforts of SOS and other organizations as cypto-racism.
Thanks for pointing that out Tim. Indeed it makes me feel a bit better. I was hoping the election would be close with both Gauny and Boydston on the winning side so I as well as all the individuals who volunteered could say we each made the difference. Now I have to think – If I just walked a few more neighborhoods could I at least have gotten Gauny over the top?
If Dave runs again, he’d do well to keep his volunteers and ditch his strategist. The late-campaign help obviously had a huge impact on his total.
In precinct 11, Ferry beat Gauny by 77 votes. Ferry’s entire margin of victory came from his strong showing in that neighborhood.
RemStar;
Be fair to Jim. In a close election ANY shortfall can be blamed for the outcome, and Ferry beat Gauny by a LOT MORE than 77 votes in the adjoining North River precincts.
???? It wasn’t my intent to be unfair. In fact, I was being supportive. Had Farley changed the minds of 17 people in his neighborhood then the fate of the SCV would taken a different arc (some would say for the better, but a plurality apparently felt for the worse). This illustrates the importance of grassroots political involvement and the value of every vote.
One more observation:
On Election Day, Boydston won the poll voters going away.
Boydston 3043 votes
Gauny 2914
McLean 2281
Weste 2220
Ferry 2075
For election day voters (not VBMs), Boydston also came in as one of the top two voter picks in 20 out of 30 precincts.
And the team that goes into the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl down by three touchdowns and makes up one touchdown in the fourth quarter is called what?
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