FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 23, 2018
Three Things To Know About The AZ-08 Special Election
PHOENIX (April 23, 2018) – Tomorrow marks another all-important Special Election and this time it’s Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District. Arizona’s OH Predictive Insights (OHPI) wanted to take the three interesting trends from the mountain of data available regarding early ballot returns.
1. The Women Surge Didn’t Last
As ballots poured in the first couple of days, the electorate seemed to be driven by an influx of women. It grew among all parties led mostly by Democrats with a double-digit gender gap.
Republicans broke 50% female by the second day, while Independent ballots lagged, indicating that maybe Independents won’t swing overwhelmingly to Hiral Tipirneni, the Democratic candidate for Congress.
However, as ballots tapered off, the gender makeup overall and by party has stayed about the same, as depicted in the chart above.
2. Republican Areas Are Returning More Total Ballots
The maps above, (the top two courtesy of Garrett Archer at the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, and the bottom from Decision Desk’s Miles Coleman), show first the returned ballots as of April 19 in green.
A large number of returned ballots are coming from the surrounding precincts in the North and to the West. These are mostly Republican areas, as they still voted for Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the sheriff’s race in 2016, as shown in the bottom map depicting that race.
In the city, the highest concentration is centralized in the areas that Republican candidate, Debbie Lesko, performed the best in when she won the primary a couple of months ago indicating that it will be a geographic overperformance for her there.
These areas point to a solid performance that will favor Republicans in the early voting numbers.
3. Democrats Are Struggling In The Bigger Areas
The above chart shows the number of returned ballots separated by the legislative district and shaded in to show the percent of returned ballots that were marked as Democratic.
From here, you can see that while they capture more ballots in smaller areas, Democrats are falling behind in some of the larger districts, and especially struggling in LD1 and falling behind in the largest one, LD22.
To pull off a win, Tipirneni will need larger crossover support in the more populated areas
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Media Contact: Tiffany Traver, OH Predictive Insights, t.traver@ohpredictive.com, 602-329-9460
About OH Predictive Insights
Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights provides accurate polling, focus groups, data analytics and advanced targeted marketing to political and non-political clients alike. With leading professionals in the advertising, communication, polling and political arenas, OH Predictive Insights will service political and non-political clients looking to improve their footing on key stakeholders and consumers. For more information, please call 602-254-5159 or submit a request online.