Election Day 2023 - An Analysis of Local Results

A late night shows that some communities are going in a different direction in the new year

Early Voting Trends

Back in August, voters turned out in a rare special summertime election to decide a statewide consitituional amendement. With one ballot question, the election was primed to be a pre-cursor to what was going to happen in the November General Election. The idea being that if folks were going to come out in August, odds are they will come out in November. It would also be expected that more people wouldl vote in the following general election.

The final turnout in the August election in Miami County was an impressive 42%. In that percentage included 8,483 early votes; those early votes accounted for 27% of all votes cast.

The early vote count for this election throughout the county was 11,163 an impressive increase of 32% over the August figure. However, that 32% was not distributed evenly throughout the county. The early votes cast in the Bethel Local School Distict were 38% higher than in August; the early votes cast in the Troy City School District were only 28% higher than in August.

What accounts for such wide discrepencies? It is hard to say. Certainly, the contested school board race in Bethel Township could have been a factor and but yet, Troy had contested races as well. It just goes to show that communities have an amazing ability to show different voting behaviors even across different elections.

Troy School Building Bond and Levy Issue

Voters were asked for the third time to vote for a bond issue to build new schools in the Troy City School District. The district’s first effort in the 2017 November General Election failed by a 20% margin with the effort winning in only three precincnts (Troy 4C, Troy 6C and Troy 6D). The 2020 effort was voted upon in the midst of the pandemic and again lost by the same 20% margin; this time carrying only two precincts.

Well, the third time was the charm for the effort as it won in a solid effort by a 54-46% margin and carried 19 of the district’s 30 precincts. Interestingly, the effort struggled in the city’s first ward and Precinct 2B (northeast part of the town) and Precincts 3A and 3B, which are two precincts encompassing downtown and the neighborhoods just south of that area.

Contested School Board Races

There is no community that has undergone more of a physical and cultural transformation in the past few years than Bethel Township. The school district in that part of the county is one of the fastest growing in the entire state. Of the eight precincts that make up the district, two of them didn’t even exist a few years ago. Those precincts are in the Huber Heights portion of the county; which believe it or not, there are more people who live in the Miami County portion of Huber Heights than live in the entire Village of West Milton.

The voters in Bethel Township decided to go in a completely different direction as one incumbent candidate dropped out of the race and the second incumbent was defeated by a team that ran as a slate, Regan Bulter, Jackie Leshkowich and Andy Vieth. Bulter and Leshkowich were elected to a four-year term on the board while Mr. Vieth was elected two a two-year unexpired term.

There was also a contested race for two seats on the Troy School Board. Two incumbents announced that they were not running again, leaving the path open to two newcomers. The eventual winners of the race were Sarah Davis and Ben Redick. Both Davis and Redick were pretty much the top two vote getters in each precinct with Davis winning 21 precincts and Redick winning 9. Both candidates were within two percentage points of each other.

Troy Undervote

One of the most interesting data sets that is often underlooked is the undervote, or the percentage of votes that aren’t captured by candidates in uncontested elections. Many times, voters simply decide to “leave the bubble blank”.

In Troy, council members are elected every two years and here are the percentages that current sitting council members received when they were last on the ballot in 2021.

At-Large Members - 38.0%*

Samuel Pierce (Third Ward) - 33.8%

William Twiss (Fifth Ward) - 32.1%

Kristie Marshall (Second Ward) - 32.1%

Mel Shane (Treasurer) - 28.2%

Bobby Phillips (Fourth Ward) - 28.1%

Jeffrey Whidden (First Ward) - 25.7%

Jeffrey Schilling (Sixth Ward) - 25.2%

William Lutz (Council President) - 24.8%

* A note on At-Large Members: Since all three members (Lynne Snee, Todd Severt and William Rozell) run in one race it is difficult to measure this metric. The figure was determined by looking at all undervotes in the race and dividing against all votes cast in the race.

Many of the offices in the ballot were last contested four years ago, here are the undervotes for those races four years ago that will be on the ballot for the first time since 2019.

Grant Kerber (Law Director) - 24.2%

John Frigge (Auditor) - 22.8%

Robin Oda (Mayor) - 17.1%

As expected, candidates this year say a much higher undervote total.

The city-wide candidate with the lowest undervote was the City Auditor, John Frigge, who had an undervote of 30.7%. This is noteworthy because usually the undervote gets larger further down the ballot one votes. Having the third office be the highest vote getter is something that is pretty rare. Other city-wide undervote total included:

Grant Kerber (Law Director) - 31.3%

William Rozell (Council President) - 31.8%

Robin Oda (Mayor) - 31.8%

At-Large Council - 50.0%

Ward canddiate figures include:

Samuel Pierce (Third Ward) - 36.3%

Kristie Marshall (Second Ward) - 35.0%

William Twiss (Fifth Ward) - 34.2%

Bobby Phillips (Fourth Ward) - 32.4%

Jeff Whidden (First Ward) - 30.5%

Jeff Schilling (Sixth Ward) - 30.0%

Possible Recount for Tipp City Council?

The race for Tipp City Council was extremely close. Kathryn Huffman was the top vote getter with 23.5% of the vote and Michael McFarland received the least amount of votes at 11.05%. Crammed between these two candidates were four other candidates each getting between 15.6% and 17%. The difference between the third candidate (Logan Rogers who would win at this point) and the fourth candidate (Will Roberts who would lose) is a mere 0.46%, within the 0.5% margin that would trigger a recount.

What else do you want to know?

It was a late night as the precinct results didn’t get posted until after midnight. Is there a race that suprised you with the outcome? Do you have other questions? Leave a comment and we will dig into it.

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