Primary tabs

More Chapel Hill election turnout analysis

2013 Chapel Hill Election Turn Out

In spite of the efforts of candidates, college dems, league of women voters and many others turnout for last November’s Chapel Hill election was low. Here is an analysis of the 5313 people who voted in the Chapel Hill Orange County precincts. (Turnout was about 11%) (Total number of Durham County Chapel Hill voters was under 300. Including it would not change very much the analysis.)The data base from the Board of Elections can be sorted by many categories. I looked at age and race. (Latino is not an official category so I estimated it using voter names.) Several of us campaigned a lot in "minority" precincts but it looks like minority turnout was lower than average. Also note that very few college aged residents voted. For example, according to the data base: at Hinton James 5 people voted, 2 from Ehringhause, 12 from Baity Hill and 7 from Paul Hardin Dorm. Fifty percent of the voters are at least 60 years old and less than 10% are under 30 even though thousands of university students live in Chapel Hill. The May 6 Primary will occur at the end of the semester for UNC. Most students who vote will probably do it via early voting or absentee. The Democratic primary election will determine the winners in Orange County for Commissioners and other county offices. I hope more people will vote this May than last November.

Race/Ethnic Group # voters Age #voters

Asian	158 (3.0%)	18 27 (0.5%)
African American	201 (3.8%)	19 20 (0.4%)
American Indian	6	20 24
Other	109	21 25
2 or more races	28	22 44 (0.8%)
Undesignated	80	23 39
White	4731 (89.0%)	101 1
Latino	50 (1%)	Under 30 years old: 378 (7.1%) Median age of voters: 60 years

Tags:

Chapel Hill

Issues:

Elections

Comments

Hispanic indicator

Submitted by James Barrett on March 29, 2014 - 11:12pm

is in ethnic_code field -- HL is the value you're looking for. I see 47 out of 5306 CH in OC voters in Nov.

HL code

Submitted by ldhintz on April 1, 2014 - 11:40am

Thanks, The data set I received did not have that Hispanic/Latino HLfield. I counted 49 ( and rounded to 50) so I guess I matched pretty well the data base. Loren

avail online

Submitted by James Barrett on April 2, 2014 - 7:21am

I find it much easier to get this stuff online - ftp://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/data/. ncvhis68.zip is who has voted in OC. ncvoter68.zip is who is registered (with their demo data) in OC. Join them together with voter_reg_num

These numbers look no

Submitted by Poppalax on March 30, 2014 - 10:59am

These numbers look no different than those you see in other non-presidential years.

SURPRISE! SURPRISE! SURPRISE!

Submitted by gpknc on March 31, 2014 - 9:08am

Are you really surprised! Gary Kahn

Turnout Percentage?

Submitted by George C on April 1, 2014 - 3:01pm

Loren,Is that percentage turnout based on the total number of registered voters for Chapel Hill? That would require ~48K registered voters which seems a bit high.

counts

Submitted by James Barrett on April 2, 2014 - 7:50am

Current counts of CH voters in OC are 44k. Only 37.5k are active, however (meaning they've actually voted semi-recently).

Turn out

Submitted by ldhintz on April 4, 2014 - 10:29pm

I was actually using the county turnout of 11.78% and typed it as 11%. If you use the numbers given to us from last June for each precinct in Chapel Hill and the voter turnout you don't get much better. Using just the town data for Chapel Hill 5313/43865= 12.11%. Durham precincts are about the same. Country Club, East Franklin, Lincoln, Mason Farm and Northside had the lowest turnout of less than 5%. This is problable due the large number of students who live there and don't vote. Weaver Dairy Sat (Carol Woods) won the turnout prize at 77%. My home precinct Kings Mill came in 2nd at 30%. Coker Hills (23%), Estes Hills (20%), and Battle Park (18%) round up the list of top five precincts. Majority rules but plurality votes. Hope more vote in May.