Central City Seizure

May 31 Council Runoff Election Results, by District
	Total vote	Turnout		Spelman	Zuniga	Spelman Margin		Lewis	Mitchell	Lewis Margin
TOTAL	43045	0.1166		23293	19306	3987		23184	19453	3731
CENTRAL	13919	0.1597		9805	4043	5762		9909	3882	6027
EAST	4816	0.1379		2137	2486	-349		1664	3111	-1447
NORTH	7018	0.0936		3629	3338	291		3558	3408	150
NORTHWEST	6623	0.1263		2655	3923	-1268		2820	3732	-912
SOUTH/SE	4394	0.0698		2202	2147	55		2325	2003	322
SOUTHWEST	6275	0.1106		2865	3369	-504		2908	3317	-409
Election Results by Turnout
Boxes with 7% or less	4683	0.05		2276	2354	-78		2366	2258	108
7.01-11.66%	10868	0.0904		5009	5738	-729		5057	5712	-655
11.67-16.00%	10587	0.1356		6033	4400	1663		5749	4746	1003
16.01% and up	16907	0.219		9975	6814	3161		10012	6737	3275

When Ronney Reynolds made his surprise bailout of the mayoral runoff, some insiders speculated that Double-R's real motive was to help his conservative soulmates, Manuel Zuniga and Eric Mitchell. By shielding them from the expected juggernaut of Kirk Watson supporters, the theory went, they would have a better chance holding their own against their lesser-known, lesser-financed opponents.

If this was indeed a strategy, it backfired with deadly force on Saturday; the unprecedented progressive sweep of the City Council can in large part be pegged to low turnout outside the city center, where Ronney's voters were concentrated. While both Bill Spelman and Willie Lewis actually improved on their May 3 performances within their central-city base (much more so, naturally, in the case of Spelman, who apparently succeeded in picking up both Karen Hadden's and Bobbie Enriquez' votes in the heart of town), Zuniga and Mitchell's margins dropped substantially in North, Northwest, and Southwest Austin. (Substantially enough to swing the North, where Mitchell won on May 3 by more than 1,000 votes and Zuniga by nearly 900, to the progressive column.)

While it's conceivable that Spelman and Lewis actually picked up votes since May 3 in these conservative strongholds - especially Lewis, benefiting from voter disgust with Mitchell's ultra-sleazy runoff campaign - it seems more likely that the conservative voters just stayed home. A breakdown of the votes by turnout shows that Zuniga and Mitchell both won among voters in boxes where turnout was lower than the citywide average of 11.66%, but lost in boxes where turnout broke that threshold.

Turnout in Individual Boxes, by District
	Central	East	North	NW	S/SE	SW	TOTAL
7% or less	4	1	8	3	14	1	31
7.01-11.66%	3	4	14	6	9	11	47
11.67-16.00%	9	7	5	2	3	8	34
16.01% and up	18	4	4	6	0	2	34
Total	34	16	31	17	26	22	146

This makes sense when you see that less than half of the boxes in North, Northwest and Southwest reached the 11.66% mark, while three-quarters of the central boxes broke it. Were it not for a few high-performing boxes in the Northwest and Southwest, those sectors' overall turnout would likely have been in the single digits; those boxes were, unsurprisingly, where Mitchell and Zuniga pulled their largest margins. (Conversely, were the central-city turnout totals not skewed by the West Campus boxes, where turnout is always pathetic but even more so now that school's out, its overall turnout would have come close to 19%.)

Mitchell was also helped, of course, by his 2-to-1 pounding of Lewis on the unusually high-turnout Eastside, although even this is a little misleading, since Lewis did win several East Austin boxes and fight Mitchell to a near-tie in others. (There were no tie boxes in the Place 6 race but four in the Place 5 race.) One might have expected Zuniga to post a similar advantage in the predominantly Hispanic South/Southeast, but even accounting for the turnout difference between there and the Eastside, Zuniga's weakness in those precincts was surprising, since he beat Spelman there in the first round by nearly 1,000 votes, even with two other Hispanic candidates in the race. And while Mitchell losing the South/Southeast is nothing shocking, given his often fractious relations with the Hispanic community, Zuniga's fairly anemic lead on the Eastside is at least a minor surprise.

And, in case you were curious: Out of a total of 146 boxes, only 20 split their tickets, with 11 Spelman/Mitchell precincts and nine Zuniga/Lewis boxes. There's no real pattern to these precincts, except that they were all swing boxes; margins of victory for the winners were narrow in all cases.

Vote Totals: Early Voting vs. E-Day
	Early Voting		Election Day		Total Vote
Bill Spelman	6996	51.7%	16297	56.1%	23293	54.7%
Manuel Zuniga	6540	48.3%	12766	43.9%	19306	45.3%
Willie Lewis	7415	54.6%	15769	54.3%	23184	54.4%
Eric Mitchell	6171	45.4%	13282	45.7%	19453	45.6%