Though the Democratic candidates for Cook County Board president fought for months over a slew of issues -- health care, corruption, the county's unpopular sales tax -- the Current's exit poll of primary voters suggests none of it mattered much.
Tuesday's election boiled down to demographics. Skin color, age and gender mattered, our analysis shows, while the issues did not.
Indeed, we found no statistically significant correlation between voting decisions and any of the issue-related questions included in our survey.
It's perhaps to be expected, given that the election pitted Terry O'Brien, cut from the familiar South Side Irish mold, ag ainst incumbent Todd Stroger, who ran a campaign designed to polarize voters along racial lines.
Toni Preckwinkle grabbed 77% of the black vote, while O'Brien's support in that community was almost nonexistent.
Preckwinkle's support fell to 68% among white voters, while O'Brien got 21%.
Meanwhile, the Stroger campaign's downfall is clearly illustrated by the numbers: He received a humbling 14% of the black vote.
That's wildly ironic, given Stroger's constant complaining that Preckwinkle and Brown would pull black voters away from him, leaving O'Brien with a winning majority of mostly white voters.
What really happened was that black voters and white voters alike fled Stroger in favor of Preckwinkle.
Preckwinkle also polled well among voters older than 55, and females. O'Brien picked up support from younger voters and men.
Another interesting stat: of the voters who made their candidate choices within 10 days of the election, O'Brien received very little support.
Preckwinkle snagged about an equal proportion of voters who made their decisions in the days running up the election, and those who decided earlier.
This suggests to me that a core group of white voters who weren't interested in hearing much from non-white candidates made their decision early. Preckwinkle, meanwhile, peeled off the sizable majority of voters who were less rigid in their preferences.
A footnote on the numbers: As I've mentioned previously, our poll oversampled Preckwinkle voters, so her winning percentages are higher among our survey respondents than they were among the electorate as a whole.
This wraps up our analysis of the exit poll data from Tuesday's election. Can you think of any other numbers we should have crunched? Questions left unanswered?
Windy Citizen 