Election Analysis

As we noted yesterday, turnout at the Sycamore precinct (the Village including Pilgrim Place) was high--48% compared to 29% for the rest of the city. Linda Elderkin and Sam Pedroza won big there, 635 and 605 votes, respectively, compared to 490 for Peter Yao, 208 for Jackie McHenry, and 201 for Opani Nasiali.

The Joslyn Center polling place also went strong for Elderkin, Pedroza and Yao, and together with Sycamore provided the 605 vote cushion for Elderkin over McHenry for third place.

The Village Strategy--playing to their base, running the whispering campaign against McHenry for four years (she's negative, abrasive, disruptive, failing to credit her for any accomplishments) and then tying Nasiali to McHenry--worked. Turnout wasn't high enough at other precincts for the other candidates to offset the Village vote.

Also, we can infer that the vote-for-only-two thinking (Elderkin and Pedroza) was strong in Village. The under vote--the number of total possible votes (3 per ballot) minus the number of votes actually cast, was 232 on 817 ballots. As noted, Elderkin got 635 at Sycamore, Pedroza got 605, and Yao was way behind at 490. And then the numbers really dropped off for the others.

Turnout at the two college precincts was lower than the city average--13.5% for Oakmont (Pomona College voted here) and 18.5% for Granite Creek Church(the northern colleges and also Mike Maglio's home base). So, the College Strategy--for candidates counting on college students to vote--was pretty much a flop.

This is actually how elections have traditionally gone in Claremont, so we interpret this as reversion to pre-2001 trends with the Village essentially electing the council.