The American Arbitration Association sent the UFT a huge printout of the breakdown of UFT votes in the latest election. While we cannot determine how a member in each district voted as the ballots are separated after outer envelopes are opened and not counted by district, we can examine the raw turnout by district.
These are the high school turnout numbers by district according to what AAA sent out:
District 71 Manhattan High Schools: 683 votes=14.5% of total HS turnout
District 72 Bronx High Schools: 594 votes=12.6%
District 73 Brooklyn High Schools: 729 votes=15.5%
District 76 Brooklyn-Staten Island High Schools: 984 votes=20.9%
District 77 Queens High Schools: 1712 votes=36.4%
Total is 4702 votes which pretty much matches the number of votes cast for high schools.
We would still need ballots sent per district to do actual turnout percentages but we can draw some rough general conclusions from the data provided.
Queens is the largest high school district so we should have the highest number of votes. However, I am not sure if Queens is this much bigger than everyone else. If we combine Brooklyn and Brooklyn-Staten Island (Brooklyn is divided into two districts), there are 1713 votes so even proportionally, it appears as though Queens did well in turnout with 1712 votes. Manhattan and the Bronx combined only get to 1277 votes. Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx added together get to 1996.
Quick analysis
1-My theory is right that where members know us, they vote for us. Since MORE-NEW ACTION won a majority in the high schools, I think we can reasonably infer that most of our votes came from Queens and Brooklyn-Staten Island where we are best known.
2-Our get out the vote drive in Queens High Schools worked to a degree. Arthur Goldstein, Sam Lazarus, Camille Eterno, Joel Berger (from New Action), Norm Scott in the Rockaways and I along with all of those Jamaica High School expatriates mattered a bit. Now there is a little more solid evidence to support this view.
We had a very wide geographic region to cover in Queens for our get out the vote campaign and to some extent we succeeded. I say to some extent because although we won the high schools, turnout is still way too low in UFT elections with only about a quarter of eligible voters casting a ballot. Queens High Schools did not shatter this for sure but it looks like we held our own.
We'll post the other district numbers separately later.
6 comments:
Thank goodness we stopped allowing you high school people to select your own Vice President. Who knows what sort of rabble rouser would have been seated if we hadn't come to our senses?
That Eterno asshole is the elected choice of the high school teachers. We are so smart to leave him as a glorified ATR. Unity forever.
To Anon 12:49 PM:
Is is of no surprise you are Unity with your verbally abusive attitude and hostility toward others. It is refreshing our union has people like James Eterno who thinks and uses his mind unlike yourself. Sounds like you could not hack the classroom like Randi and Mike.
The comment was a joke. I guess you did not get it. It was in the raving lunatic spirit.
Students in the city divide:
Brooklyn 29.1%
Queens 28.7%
Bronx 21.1%
Manhattan 15.0%
Staten Island 6.2%
This is a reasonable proxy for the number of high school teachers by borough.
Thus Queens had turnout of 36.4/ 28.7 or 27% over average
Manhattan 14.5/15 or 3% below average
The Bronx 12.6/21.1 or 40% below average
Brooklyn and Staten Island combined (15.5 + 20.9)/(29.1 + 6.2) or 3% above average.
The outliers (obviously) are the high turnout in Queens and the miserable turnout in the Bronx. I may mess around with some school size analysis... I'm guessing that a portion of the difference correlates to the creation of mini-schools. (but only a portion - I agree with your analysis above - just searching for additional factors)
Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan.
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