It is as if nothing changed. Atlanta mayoral candidate Mary Norwood got 49.6 percent when she ran eight years ago, as well as the same this past Tuesday in the runoff against opponent Keisha Bottoms. Norwood got 3,870 more votes last Tuesday than in 2009, but Bottoms got 3,915 votes more than candidate (and outgoing mayor) Kasim Reed did in 2009. So each gained about the same number of votes from 2009 (putting Reed in place of Bottoms for 2009). But there are more interesting results to consider:
· Norwood did better in DeKalb County this time— she won the DeKalb part of the district by 1,376 votes, compared with just a 133-vote margin in DeKalb in 2009. However, her margin in Fulton worsened. She lost Fulton by 2,135 votes last Tuesday, compared with an 847-vote loss in Fulton in the 2009 runoff.
· One factor behind Norwood’s loss had to do with Atlanta Council District 8, traditionally the city’s GOP district on the west side of Buckhead, running west of Peachtree and Roswell Roads to the Chattahoochee and down to edge of Atlantic Station. She got about 650 FEWER votes in Ward 8 (under the current lines, the 2009 Ward 8 had slightly different boundaries) than in 2009. As one example, in the Atlanta 8B precinct, which includes Chastain Park and Lake Forrest Drive, Norwood got 170 FEWER votes there than in 2009. That’s equal to 22 percent of her 759-vote loss margin. She still would have lost without those 650 votes from 2009, but her loss margin would have been cut to 109 thus making a recount more plausible. One veteran journalist asks: “One wonders why the missing Norwood voters did not show up?”
· Turnout was very dismal overall in the city— 29 percent of the city’s 315,000 active registered voters. But that’s well above that (39 percent) in Ward 8, which helped Norwood despite her lower numbers from 2009.
· Results above do NOT include provisional votes that be sorted through today. But provisional won’t affect the overall outcome much.
· Vicious state Democrat Party attacks on so-called “Republican Mary” probably made a difference in this close race. Many voters got many robocalls from Democrats like Emma Darnell linking Norwood to President Donald Trump, warning that the days of “plantation politics” (?) are over. Keep in mind Clinton won 81 percent in the city of Atlanta last year. Trump only received 16 percent in the city.
· One pollster also took a beating in this election. Landmark Communications polling had Norwood up by 6 last Friday. But Georgia-based Opinion Savvy polled the race for Fox5Atlanta WAGA-TV and got it right— a statistical dead heat.
