By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One introduced the premise of this series: the use of cast vote records to examine partisan differences in voting in the 2024 school board primary. Part Two looked at turnout by party. Part Three examined voting for school board incumbents by party. Part Four looked at ballot placement. Part Five looked at the Apple Ballot. Part Six examined undervoting. Now we will look at how party members voted in individual races.
Before looking at the data, let’s note that the percentages in this series are different than those reported by the State Board of Elections because the denominator here includes overvotes and undervotes, not just votes for candidates. Overvotes occur when a voter votes for more candidates than allowed (for example, voting for two people for just one seat). Undervotes occur when a voter does not cast a vote for that seat. Undervotes are very common in school board races. One of the advantages of using cast vote records, as this series does, is that they explicitly include overvotes and undervotes. So when overvotes and undervotes are included, the percentage received by any one candidate or groups of candidates is lower than when overvotes and undervotes are excluded.
There were three school board races on the ballot in this year’s primary: at-large, District 2 and District 4. Each one featured an incumbent, a challenger who was on the Apple Ballot and at least one other challenger. Here are the top three finishers in each race as picked by all voters, Democrats, Republicans and others (of whom a huge majority were unaffiliated).
At-Large
All voters
Lynne Harris (incumbent): 26%
Rita Montoya (Apple Ballot): 25
Melissa Kim: 12
Undervotes: 20
Democrats
Montoya (Apple Ballot): 28%
Harris (incumbent): 27
Kim: 12
Undervotes: 21
Republicans
Sharif Hidayat: 15%
Harris (incumbent): 15
Kim: 13
Undervotes: 24
Others (mostly unaffiliated)
Harris (incumbent): 26%
Montoya (Apple Ballot): 23
Kim: 17
Undervotes: 3
District 2
All voters
Natalie Zimmerman (Apple Ballot): 36%
Brenda Diaz: 16
Rebecca Smondrowski (incumbent): 14
Undervotes: 22
Democrats
Zimmerman (Apple Ballot): 39%
Diaz: 15
Smondrowski (incumbent): 15
Undervotes: 22
Republicans
Zimmerman (Apple Ballot): 22%
Diaz: 22
Ricky Fai Mui: 14
Undervotes: 26
Others (mostly unaffiliated)
Zimmerman (Apple Ballot): 33%
Diaz: 22
Smondrowski (incumbent): 16
Undervotes: 5
District 4
All voters
Laura Stewart (Apple Ballot): 38%
Shebra Evans (incumbent): 22
Bethany Mandel: 18
Undervotes: 21
Democrats
Stewart (Apple Ballot): 40%
Evans (incumbent): 25
Mandel: 14
Undervotes: 22
Republicans
Mandel: 40%
Stewart (Apple Ballot): 26
Evans (incumbent): 8
Undervotes: 25
Others (mostly unaffiliated)
Stewart (Apple Ballot): 42%
Mandel: 27
Evans (incumbent): 25
Undervotes: 6
So what can we make of this series?
Members of different parties voted differently in this year’s school board primary. Democrats were more likely to vote for Apple Ballot candidates, especially in a bloc, than other voters. Republicans disliked both Apple candidates and incumbents. Unaffiliated voters voted when they showed up, but low turnout prevented them from playing a bigger role in the race.
The Apple seemed to matter more than incumbency and the alphabet. More than 20,000 Democrats voted ONLY for Apple school board candidates. The teachers union should throw that stat into the faces of all candidates running for state and county office in the next election.
That said, while this particular election provided a good opportunity to examine the Apple’s impact in isolation from other factors – because it was virtually the only differentiator between the candidates – most elections don’t function that way. Candidates for state and county office often have six-digit budgets (and more for executive and statewide candidates) and can afford their own comms programs. Incumbency matters more when voters know who the incumbents are. Therefore, the Apple typically plays on a field with other players. While important, it’s not clear that it always dominates.
For example, another prominent endorsement comes from the Washington Post, and I wonder what role the Post could have played this year. The last time the Post endorsed in a school board primary was in 2020, when its support of Lynne Harris for an open at-large seat combined with the teachers’ endorsement of Sunil Dasgupta to box out boundary study opponent Stephen Austin. If the Post had endorsed incumbent Rebecca Smondrowski this time, could it have saved her from being eliminated in the primary? We will never know.
In any event, given the activism of the teachers this year, the Post might be the only force capable of rescuing this year’s incumbents from a wrathful Apple Ballot. We shall be watching what, if anything, the Post does in the weeks to come.