BugPAC's Impact
(Photo from the "Elect Charles R. Gable" website)
This blog post, the first of Three O'Four, is going to look at data from recent State College Elections in order to asses the impact of BugPAC's recent effort to elect four pro student candidates; three Borough Council Representatives (Dan Murphy, Evan Myers, Marina Cotarelo) and one Mayoral Candidate (Michael Black). Hopefully by combing through some data, we can get a good sense of just how much of an impact BugPAC had on the recent State College Municipal Primary.
Let's start with the face-value results. On the May 16th election, Borough Counsil Candidates Dan Murphy and Evan Myers won the Democratic nomination, along with Theresa Lafer. Michael Black lost the Democratic nomination to Don M Hann, however, he won the Republican nomination through a write-in campaign, a strategy encouraged by BugPAC. Marina Cotarelo was unable to succure any nomination for the November Election. Just looking at the election results, three out of the four candidates seccured a nomination, which could be argued as a success for a student run political action committee with only a few months of activity before the election.
Another measure of BugPAC's success would be the increase in student participation in the May Primary. This was a main talking point of the group, starting from co-chairman Terry Ford's State of State talk. The action committee held a major initiative to both register students to vote in State College and request an absentee ballot if the student did not plan on being in Centre County on May 16th. According to the Daily Collegean, the number of absentee ballots cast in the Municipal Primary increased from 30 in 2015 to 193 in 2017, a 543% increase. This is certainly a noticable increase, and could easily be attributed to the intiatives of BugPAC.
Now time for the hard data. Using the election data available from centrecountypa.gov, I was able to analyze, precinct-by-precinct, voter turnout from four recent elections: the 2017 Municipal Primary, the 2015 Municipal Primary, the 2015 Municipal Election, and the 2016 General Election. I have included the precinct map, curtousy of the "Elect Charles R. Gable" website, to provide a visual of the different precincts. Looking at the map, and using background knowlege of State College housing, one can determine that the precincts which contain mostly students are the 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 33rd, and 34th. The 18th, 22nd, 23rd, and 31st appear to contain both students and permenent residents. This knowledge is important in order to analyze voter turnout trends and asses BugPAC's impact on the election.
There was a noticable increase in voter turnout, with 7.12% of registered Democrats participating in the 2015 Municipal Primary, and 14.49% of registered Democrats participating in the 2017 Primary. Looking precinct-by-precinct, the largest percentage increases in turnout are from the student heavy precincts mentioned ablove. However, these are just percents, and it is easy to have a big percentage jump when the 2015 voting in these precincts is in the single digits, sometimes even zero votes cast. Sure enough, the largest raw increase in precinct turnout resided in permenent resident areas, which already had tripple digit turnouts but still added close to 100 voters between 2015 and 2017. Wtih information, one could say BugPAC has energized the student base with the noticable increase in student precinct turnout, but is not keeping up with the more residential parts of State College, which is essential if the group wants to get more pro-student cadidates elected. Stepping away from objectivity, I would like to propose that BugPAC also energized the permenent resident base to vote against BugPAC supported candidates, simply looking at Op-Eds in the Centre Daily Times and the extensive amount of lawn signs pre-election, and now looking at the increase turnout in these precincts comprised mostly of permenent residents.
Finally, I want to introduce a new metric to measure the problem of student voter turnout, which I call voter volume. The calculation is a simple ratio; the percentage of voter turnout over the percentage of registered voters for a precinct. For example, in 2017 the 16th precinct cast 10.92% of the Democratic votes, even though it only held 3.31% of State College's registered Democrats. This gives the 16th a voter volume of 3.30, meaning winning votes from voters in the 16th precinct is like winning voters in 3.30 of State College's precincts. Kind of a weird metric, I know, but look at the ratio as a measurement of relative voter envolvement, and the higher the number, the better the better the voter turnout in the precinct. Below is the voter volume for the State College precincts from the four elections I mentioned at the beginning.
Those stundent heavy precincts I pointed to at the top of the article are almost entirely in red, meaning they have a voter volume below 1; their share of ballots cast is significantly less than their share of registered voters. If all the precincts had a voter volume of 1, then State College Politicians would try to appeal to students, since these student heavy precincts house two to three times as many registered Democrats as the other precincts. However, as this chart shows, the students don't show up to vote, both in the primary and election. Looking at the 2017 line, a politician winning over the 24th precinct, which houses East Halls, is equivalent to winning over 7% of a normal precinct, and 2.1% of the nearby 16th district. As long as this is the case, politicians will skew their appeal to permanent residents, and may even cast aside the students they represent for the simple reason that come election time, the permament residents vote and the students do not.
That was my long-winded, data-driven way to show that BugPAC appears to have made a measureable difference in the Municipal Primaries, but there is still a long road ahead. BugPAC has only had a public presence in State College for a few months, so it is certainly not time to throw in the towel. Major political change takes time and effort from countless citizens, and should BugPAC continue to gain traction in the student and State College community, maybe someday the voter volumes of the precincts will shift towards 1, ideal for any democracy. Looking at the 2016 General Election, this reality is possible. In the student-heavy precincts, the voter volume is only slightly below 1, and in the others don't exceed 2. Perhaps is organizations like BugPAC brought a level of interest to the Municipal Primiaries and Eelctions commonly only reserved for our Presidential elections, the volume will finally balance and the Borough Counci will start to house more student friendly Representatives.
-Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
Seamus
