Prophet's comments and predictions

On election night, the Wash Park Prophet provided a running commentary on the results. While his estimated turnout numbers soon proved inaccurate, the comments were generally both interesting and informative.

Below are three of his best:

Antoinette Alire's mere 60 vote showing in the 3rd Council District is notable, not only because it is the smallest number of votes cast for a non-write in candidate (the 3rd district has the lowest voter turnout and the largest number of candidates so someone in that race was bound to have that distinction) but also because, if I recall correctly, you need 100 signatures to get on the ballot -- Alire lost at least 40 of the people who signed her petition on the way to the mailbox to mail ballots...

The Rocky Mountain News endorsements, while printed less often than those of the Denver Post, better match the results. The Rocky endorsed Lopez in District 3, Nevitt in District 7 and split its endorsement between Bailey and Madison in District 8...

Trust the Denver Post to run with the most uninformative headline imaginable for anyone who has been paying any attention to prior coverage of this race: "Hickenlooper Re-elected." When did they come up with that one? Last month? The mediocre Denver Post coverage of city issues continues. The Rocky in fairness, does little better, proclaiming "Hick Wins Second Term", although it does have subheadlines about other races that are mildly more informative.

After a review of the Prophet's "predictions" (which simply followed the money line and thus mirrored results in every race except Council District 8), he offered a look forward to the runoff elections:

[In Council District 3,] the Lopez v. Phillips runoff is big enough that it is unlikely to be upset by today's returns. Kathy Sandoval, next in the vote count, is 103 votes behind Phillips (almost 4 percentage points). Assuming that Lopez holds onto voters who voted for him in the first round, he needs only about one in seven of voters who didn't vote for Phillips or himself to win. Phillips was endorsed by the Denver Post after my last set of predictions and this clearly gave her campaign a boost...

[In Council District 7, Chris] Nevitt needs about one in six of the votes for Conner and Smith to win. He is unlikely to get many Smith votes (Smith was the only registered Republican in that non-partisan race, while Nevitt is a strongly labor union backed candidate), but he has a good shot at getting at least a quarter of Connor's votes. Watters Denver Post endorsement did little to upset the status quo in that race...

[Council District 8] In a Bailey v. Madison race, I think Bailey probably has an edge with Watson and Rasheed supporters over Madison, whose appeal is greater in the central business district area. Madison, of course, needs to win a supermajority of Watson and Rasheed supporters to win, in any case.