Slow election EV updates from AZ CD-08 since my last update, so time to take a brief survey over this long Election Eve Weekend of what I consider to be the key Arizona Legislative District to watch for a potential marginal Dem win, OR a moderately comfortable Pub win....
AZ-CD-08 LD 21 District....If Tipirneni (D) will win this district Tuesday Night OR in November '18 it will likely come down to this part of the Congressional District, as I have posted previously elsewhere within the thread...
Here is the overall voting history of this LD over the past few election cycles and Party Registration, Early Voting Turnout data from 2018...
Let's look at a brief overview of this AZ Legislative district which contains roughly 27-28% of the TOTAL vote within CD-08 in a
General Election Year.... Turnout is currently holding steady, but if we are going to see a late break for Dems, it will likely happen here, considering the extremely high proportion of Registered Indies, AND Trump only bagged 54% of the PRES vote in '16, and Sheriff Joe won by less than an inch of my beard hair in '16.
What are the Social-Demographic Stats for LD-21?
AGE: 18-34 (20%), 35-59 (28%), 60+ (28%)
Race/Ethnicity: Anglo (65.6%), Latino (25.0%), Black (4.2%), Asian (2.0%)
*** Now if we look at the Latino population of the district by age, we see roughly 36-40% of the population aged 0-17 Latino, somewhere in the high 20% range of those 18-35, and numbers start dropping significantly once we move into the 36-54 Yr Range, and 55+ Range ****
Needless to say, but I'll do it anyways, is that even with the VAP numbers, the Latino share of the Registered Voters is significantly lower than Census Data might suggest,
MHI: $ 47.5k /Yr
Ok--- some of this extremely low median household income is because of the large Senior Population, and some of it likely because there are a ton of Working-Class Voters living in the Suburbs and Exurbs of Metro Phoenix either commuting for work elsewhere, or working lower paying service sector jobs, but either way we'll set the MHI question aside for now until we start going more granular by places/precincts ....
Educational Attainment: 4+ Yr College Degree (20%), Less than High School (12.5%), High School Diploma (29.8%), Some College (28.5%), Associates (9.1%).
Needless to say the educational attainment rate in this district is significantly lower than in many other parts of the Country. Much of this is likely explained by the high Senior Retiree Population of a Generation and Age, where you didn't really need more than a HS Diploma to get a decent paying job in SoCal, and some explained by the Mexican-American Latino population in the district historically based around the City of El Mirage, which was a major destination center for Mexican-American workers to the US during WW II under the Bracero Program....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_programOccupations:The workforce here is a highly represented by working-class / Lower Middle-Class occupational sectors, despite the fact that relatively Upper-Middle Class retirees represent an extremely disproportionate share of the electorate....
Before we start digging too far into the weeds here on April 20th, here's a precinct Map of LD-21 that carves out the respective population centers within the district, since I'm going to go a bit more Macro rather than Micro (Unlike my previous postings for smaller AZ CD-08 LDs), since we have (42) precincts here....
A.) Relative Vote Share by Place within LD-21So, what this tells us that in a "typical" Midterm election (2014) in LD-21 the relative share of the vote surges from Sun City and drops heavily elsewhere, especially in Surprise and El Mirage, and to some extent Peoria as well.
Currently voter turnout models suggest this special election might be higher than in the AZ '14 GE, although much lower than the 2016 General Election, but this data at least gives us a reference point to look at as we mine the last bits of data available, and start watching election returns Tuesday Evening....
Ok--- here is a Vote Breakdown by Place within CD-21 from '12 to '16 for various elections of note:
So what does this all mean within the context of the AZ-CD 08 Special Election?
The basic math appears to suggest that the DEM candidate should be shooting to keep Pub margins down to ~ +10% in Sun City, exceed Maricopa County Sheriff numbers in Peoria, and tie or narrowly win Surprise, not to mention having impressive Turnout and Margins in traditionally low-voting Off-Year elections El Mirage....
Tall order, but mathematically feasible without a huge stretch....
Here's the current (As of Wednesday reported numbers from Maricopa County):
We see the typical pattern of Sun City leading heavily with Early Voting (65% of Total RV have already case ballots), Peoria floating somewhere around the 40% of RV range, Surprise sitting more around 35%, and El Mirage lagging at somewhere in the in the Mid to high 20% range....
As I have stated previously on the thread, Republicans in Arizona tend to vote early (and often
)and Election Day voters tend to have a much higher proportion of Democratic leaning voters....'
Still, I would much rather have my votes in the bag early as a candidate, rather than having to scratch around looking for small seeds on election day and a workday no less for many folks....
Now let's take a brief peak at the Social Demographics of LD-21:
1.) Sun CityAge: 18-34 (2%), 35-59 (12%), 60+ (85%).... *** NOTE 59% are over the age of 70 ****
Race/Ethnicity: 94% Anglo, 3% Latino, 1% Black
Household Income: $36.2k/Yr
Education: 21% 4+ Yrs College
OT: As a Gen Exer, Sun City appears to me as a really bizarre cultural pastiche of '70s and early '80s Americana that in many ways appears to combine a nostalgia for Southern California Waterparks with Las Vegas style more modern appeal.
Still, although it is the most Republican part of LD-21 we are now looking a Senior Population that combines a significant number of Baby Boomers alongside of the Silent Generation crew that first showed up in the days to this planned retirement community.
It is also noteworthy, that we saw some of the largest swings towards the DEM PRES candidate in '16 compared to '12 results compared to most parts of LD-21.
One of the rhetorical questions that I posed earlier on the thread, was how would the Dem candidates focus on Education play within Senior Citizen communities within CD-08....
It appears that in Sun City, Democrats running on Education based policies can perform quite well, if we look at the 2014 Arizona Superintendent of Education statewide election, where the Dem captured 44% in Sun City....
So here at least it doesn't appear as an either/or category when it comes to support for funding for public education from Seniors, which in many places has created political conflict between the interests of Seniors and Middle-Class parents with kids in Public school over how to fund education...
2.) Peoria:It's much more difficult to dissect the social demographics of Peoria within CD-08 Ld-21 based on Census Block Tract data, but I'll give it a toss.
We look at the
precincts located South of Cactus Road (Including Suncliff, Sun Aire, Westgreen Park, Osuna Park, Vogel, Peoria Heights, Sundance, and Comet) we are looking at precincts where on average only 55% of the population is Anglo.
In the '16 PRES Ge election we had about 18k voters (43 D- 49 R- 7 Other) and in Maricopa County Sheriff (51-48 D)...
In the '14 GE for Arizona Superintendent of Public Education, these precincts went (48-52 R).
Current turnout here is running about 32% of the total Registered Voters that break down to (31 D- 33 R- 36 I)....
Obviously this is a massive potential Democratic Vote Bank in a toss-up election.
Although the Latino Vote is much lower than the population demographics suggest, it's basically a working-class part of the district where Anglos live in the same apartment complexes and neighborhoods, kids attend the same public schools.
Median Houshold Income tends to average somewhere around $ 40k + / Yr.
Head North to precincts located above Cactus Road, the Anglo Population jumps to closer to 75% and the MHI jumps up to around $70k+ Yr....
RV= DEM (24.9), REP (44.6), IND (30.5)
Still even here with these 22.5k voters in "North Peoria" we're looking at more like a '16 Pres breakdown like (36 D- 57 R), '16 Sheriff (49.4 D- 46.6 R)... '14 in a relatively low turnout election the district voted for AZ Superintendent of Education (47-53 R)
The EV turnout here is looking something like 42+%, although we have the split precinct of Saddle Ridge that includes a significant component of Sun City lumped into the numbers here--- (judgement call of where to place), where Turnout was much higher thus far in EV numbers.
3.) SurpriseNot too many precincts from Surprise in LD-21 (Most are located in LD-22),
We have (6) precincts located here, and a brief survey indicates that most of these have a significant Latino Population and are generally Middle-Class precincts in a rapidly growing Exurban "City" where tract housing built on the edge of the desert.
RV= (26.1 D- 37.0 R- 36.9 I)
These precincts are likely inherently volatile, both because of the rapidly growing external population, as well as the extremely high number of independent registered voters.
Thus far, we are looking at overall voter turnout in the high 30% range, but I wouldn't place any bets on how this part of the Legislative District will vote in the Special Election, let alone in November....
4.) El MirageRace/Ethnicity: Anglo (44%), Latino (48%)
Age: 18-35 (29%), 36-59 (23%), 60+ (11%)
MHI: $ 47.2k
Education: 13% 4+ Yrs College
Currently voter turnout is relatively anemic here, barely over 25% and needless to say this City alone could make the difference between a close loss or a narrow win for the Democratic Candidate...
Considering these are some of the most Democratic Precincts within the District, Dems obviously need to work some serious GOTV efforts here after trying to scramble for the last few Dem voters in
Sun City and similar precincts.
Poll
