The early voting results are in for the District 2 runoff election between Josh Acevedo and Verónica Carbajal. Based on the early voting results, El Paso News projects that the winner will be Josh Acevedo. With a lead of close to 200 votes, Acevedo will likely be elected as the city representative for District 2.
Although the ballots cast today remain to be counted, the early lead by Acevedo during the early voting period makes it difficult for Carbajal to catch up. The unexpected factor was who was driving the voters to the polls during early voting.
Early Voting Drove New Voters
As we have been reporting, our analysis of the early voters in the runoff election shows that early voters were not the traditional consistent voters that the campaigns were expecting. Instead of the frequent and informed voters one would expect to see voting, the voter that cast ballots during the early voting period were infrequent voters with low voter scores. As our online voter App shows, the early voters are voters who rarely vote. Of the early voters who cast a ballot, only 60% voted on the December 9 ballot which resulted in the runoff election between Josh Acevedo and Verónica Carbajal.
This turnout infers that one of the campaigns targeted specific voters and mobilized them to cast a ballot. Additionally, although last year’s climate charter (Prop K) seemed to have been a factor in the runoff, further analysis of our voter data revealed that the early voters do not seem to have been driven by Prop K during the runoff election, as only 60% of them cast a ballot in the election where Prop K was featured.
A deeper analysis of the data metrics of the early voters shows that they were a mixed age group of voters voting specifically for the candidate that motivated them to vote. However, an analysis of each voter’s profile revealed an unexpected data point on what may have motivated them to vote.
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The Alexsandra Annello Factor
When Alexsandra Annello ran in the November 3, 2020 election she was forced into a runoff against Judy Gutierrez. Gutierrez led the election against Annello. However, during the December 12 runoff, it was Annello who defeated Gutierrez. It is the two Annello races that are common to this election’s early voters.
Overwhelmingly the common factor among the early voters is that they voted in both Annello races in 2020.
Alexsandra Annello was a factor in driving the voters who voted during early voting in the runoff between Acevedo and Carbajal.
El Paso News has learned from several sources that Annello was asking voters to vote for Acevedo.
Once the final list of voters becomes available, we will match them to our preliminary analysis and report our findings. In the meantime, when the final voters tallies are made available, we will report on them.
Stay tuned to El Paso News for the latest election news.
Disclosure
Each election cycle, El Paso News publishes the names of the political candidates that the technology company owned by Martín Paredes provides branding and technology services to. Although not required to, we provide this list to our readers for transparency purposes. Clients of Cognent have no influence over the stories we choose to cover. Click here for more details.