View the San Francisco for Sunday, October 27, 2024
States are the laboratories of democracy, as the saying goes, but San Francisco will be running its own city-sized democratic experiment come Nov. 5.What’s less clear, however, is which candidates and ballot measures will benefit from the beefed-up electorate.
“I think you’re going to have a whole group of voters that doesn’t historically vote in local mayoral elections who are turning out,” said Corey Cook, a political scientist at Saint Mary’s College of California. “And so you can imagine any number of ways that that might impact the outcome.” The difference in turnout between “off-cycle” and “on-cycle” elections can be dramatic. While primaries and midterms have typically pulled in between 40% and 60% of San Francisco’s registered voters, turnout in the last two presidential elections has topped 80%. “All of those people who show up or send in their ballot for the presidential election — most of them will also fill out their vote for the local races as well,” said UC Berkeley political-science professor Sarah Anzia, who has written extensively about the impacts of election timing on turnout. Research into election trends suggests that switching to on-cycle races tends to draw out younger voters and also makes for a more diverse electorate, she said. For example, Latino voters show up in bigger numbers during presidential races. As for who stands to benefit from such demographic shifts, Anzia said, “that’s going to depend on the candidates. It’s going to depend on the place.” San Francisco election experts are also expecting a surge in young voters this cycle, but they disagree on which way — and for which candidates — those voters will break. “When you get higher turnout, you get younger Democratic renters at a higher percentage put into the mix,” said longtime political consultant Jim Ross. Such voters make up one of the most formidable voting blocs in The City, Ross said, but, “they don’t turn out in huge numbers until you get to 55% or 60% turnout.”Conventional wisdom in San Francisco politics holds that such voters help progressive candidates and causes. That could be good news for Supervisor Aaron Peskin, seen to be the most progressive candidate in a crowded field of mayoral contenders challenging Mayor London Breed’s reelection bid. That field also includes former interim Mayor Mark Farrell, longtime nonprofit leader Daniel Lurie and Supervisor Ahsha Safai.. Then again, others aren’t so convinced that young, liberal voters will be so quick to line up behind Peskin., many of whom have been squeezed by The City’s affordability crisis. Breed’s backers point to her staunch support of policies designed to {p dir=”ltr”}Breed — considered by many to fall into San Francisco’s moderate camp — seemed to tacitly endorse the conventional wisdom on turnout as well during an interview with KCBS Radio that took place before the November 2022 election., which she opposed, as a progressive power grab, describing backers like Supervisor Dean Preston as a “group of democratic socialists” who “want to have more control and power of being able to get their people elected.” Meanwhile, many progressives have blamed recent election losses on low turnout. That includes their failure to block the recalls of three Board of Education commissioners and former District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022, as well as ceding control of the Democratic County Central Committee — which hands out the party’s official endorsements — in March.Research suggests that switching to on-cycle races draws out younger and more diverse voters, said UC Berkeley professor Sarah Anzia.since early voting began, according to local election data. Through Thursday, officials had tallied about 30,000 fewer ballots than they had at roughly the same point in the 2020 presidential election. Despite the slow start, Ross said he is still expecting turnout to exceed 80%. With a heavily loaded ballot, he suspects voters simply need some time to think things through. “This contested mayor’s race — there’s so many candidates that people are still making up their minds, right?” he said. “There’s still a long way to go between now and the election.”As of Thursday, San Francisco election officials had tallied about 30,000 fewer ballots than they had at roughly the same point in the 2020 presidential election. For starters, a bigger electorate makes for more expensive campaigns. While simple door-knocking might be enough in a neighborhood race, candidates in citywide elections must resort to much costlier outreach methods, such as TV ads, to get their messages out. “When you have elections that are concurrent with presidential elections, and turnout is going to be higher, my sense is that creates a greater need by candidates and campaigns to reach that larger number of voters,” Anzia said. It’s a campaign dynamic thought to benefit Lurie. As the heir to the Levi’s Strauss fortune, he is perhaps the best prepared to finance a high-powered media blitz. So far this election, his campaign has outspent each other by at least $4 million, according to a recent Examiner review of publicly available campaign finance filings. Along with Peskin, Lurie has also been gaining ground in recent polling. That includes a poll conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this month.Peskin finished third in the ranked-choice tabulation, followed by Farrell and then Safai. Another factor to watch: High-turnout elections tend to bring out many low-information voters who only occasionally participate in politics, politics watchers say.One school of thought is that Lurie will perform well among such low-information voters. Since such voters are thought to be more susceptible to campaign ads — given that they are still forming their impressions of the candidates — the Lurie campaign’s well-funded strategy of blanketing the airwaves might prove especially effective. Another is that Breed could be the main beneficiary, given her incumbency advantage, which grants her a high degree of name recognition. Low-information voters often gravitate towards candidates they are more familiar with, the thinking goes. This flurry of confounding factors, seemingly pointing in contradictory directions, is exactly why Cook said “I try not to predict election results.” With so many big questions that can only be answered after Election Day now hanging in the air, the election experts said, the results of this ongoing democratic experiment will be analyzed closely.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. 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