Pretty much as expected. Patrick Cannon won the mayor’s race and Democrats won nine of 11 council seats. Again. Impact of a substantial tax increase passed earlier this year, a very messy negotiations with the Panthers, and a much stronger candidate at the top of the ticket: The GOP lost a little less badly than they did two years ago. Edwin Peacock came reasonably close to beating Patrick Cannon (within 6,000 votes of 96,000 cast) though not as close as John Lassiter came to beating Anthony Foxx in 2009 (just over a 3,300 vote margin of 107,000 votes cast).
Some other observations:
• Straight-ticket voting is where Democrats won the election, giving them a 11,637 vote advantage. People who didn’t vote a straight ticket favored Peacock over Cannon, though by nowhere near enough of a margin to elect the Republican.
• The GOP got 36 percent of straight-ticket voters, which sounds bad until you realize they only got 32 percent two years ago. Republicans got 43 percent of straight-ticket voters in 2009, though public interest was higher then. And even that didn’t do Republicans that much good as they won only one of the five seats decided city-wide in 2009.
• Looking at the City Council at-large race, Republicans did poorly this year. Three of the four Republicans on the at-large ballot did worse among those that split their vote (i.e. didn’t vote straight-party) than all the Democrats. Or put another way, Vanessa Faura, the second-best scoring Republican, finished 13,297 votes behind Claire Fallon, the lowest Democratic vote-getter (which still got her returned to office) — a 11,637 vote margin from straight-ticket voters plus 1,660 votes on top of that from those splitting their vote.
• Ken Harris is the Republican candidate that did best at-large, drawing almost 8,000 more votes than Faura. Obviously, that wasn’t anywhere near enough to get him elected, as he still trailed Fallon by 5,450 votes. Harris’ margin against among those that split their ballot against the top three Democratic vote-getters: Michael Barnes (-1,342), Vi Alexander Lyles (-233), and David Howard (+710).
• The poor Republican showing citywide makes it hard to recruit good candidates and raise money. Also, the small number of Republicans on City Council means that relatively few Republicans will get named to city advisory panels and the like, which can be a key in building the kind of resume that helps when you’re running for office.
• Going forward, Peacock may well be the last Republican to get 45 percent or more of the vote in the Charlotte mayor’s race for a very long time to come. Because Republicans can’t win City Council at-large races, they just won’t have strong mayoral candidates going forward. The only exception is if someone who holds some other elected office (County Commission at-large or a legislative seat) decides to run for mayor.
• Continued demographic changes in Charlotte’s population mean that things will only get worse for Republicans going forward. Going forward, the primary will typically be more important than the general election.
• In general, the Republican Party is simply irrelevant in Charlotte. The only reason state GOP officials have to care about the Queen City is that a lot of people that live here, thus it is in their interest to try to turn out the Republican voters to reduce the Democratic margin in state-wide elections.
• Did Libertarian’s Eric Cable’s robocalls help? He got 7,579 votes (2.12 percent of total votes cast but voters could vote for four candidates). Alexander Vuchnich, a Libertarian that ran at-large in 2011, got 6,131 votes, or 2.02 percent of total votes. Cable actually did rather well, getting about 40 percent of the number of votes from ballot-splitters as compared to the bottom three Republicans running at-large. (The GOP has a massive straight-party advantage over the Libertarian Party though.)
• Not sure to what degree Cannon will be setting the agenda going forward. Barnes, Lyles, and Howard running at-large all got more votes than Cannon did running for mayor. And the five Democrats elected from districts faced (at most) token Republican opposition. So unless Cannon can raise a lot of money, his influence may be limited. Of course, the rap on him is that he doesn’t play well with others, so we could be in for some interesting times.
