By Adam Pagnucco.
A year ago, I wrote about the unusual characteristics of school board elections. One of them is that members of multiple parties can pick between the same candidates in the primaries, which are held on a non-partisan basis. (Judicial primaries function similarly.) This makes school board primaries very different from partisan primaries for state and county offices like governor, state legislators, county executive and county council. In those latter races, Democratic primary voters rule, at least in Montgomery County. But in school board primaries, Democrats, Republicans, unaffiliated voters and small party members all play.
Conventional vote tallies lump all of these votes together, but one data source enables examination of voting for members of each party: cast vote records. These records, available from the State Board of Elections, contain voting choices of each voter for each office without identifying the voter. The only information supplied for each voter is ballot style, which lists the voter’s precinct and – in primaries – party. Among other things, these records can reveal how members of each party chose between the same school board candidates as well as other offices.
This series reveals patterns of partisan voting in the 2024 school board primary along four lines.
Incumbency: How often did members of each party vote for incumbents vs challengers?
The Apple Ballot: Were there differences between party members in voting for or against candidates endorsed by the Montgomery County Education Association (MCEA)?
Undervoting: How often did members of each party choose not to vote for school board candidates?
The Alphabet: Did ballot placement of candidates, which is a function of their surnames, affect voting differently between parties?
On that last point, there is a substantial amount of literature on ballot placement and voting. Studies on voting in Denmark, Britain, Bavaria, North Dakota, California statewide general elections, California city and school board elections, the 2003 California governor recall election, New York City, the Greater London area and U.S. state legislature elections show a benefit to candidates who appear first or early on ballots. In races like school board elections which typically have little if any candidate spending, ballot placement may be one of the very few things voters know about candidates. Cast vote records can enable determination of not just voting for specific candidates by ballot placement, but also how many voters only vote for candidates at the top of the ballot.
So did members of each party really behave differently on each of the above four measures? Well folks, if they all behaved the same, we would not be publishing a series on it! We shall start breaking down the results next.