As you read this, you may be just as surprised at the outcome at the national level as I am. While polling composites generally seemed to have Trump with a slight lead, that slight lead looks to have turned into an electoral landslide the likes of which were technically possible but not probable. But while there is already considerable pontificating about that already, I would prefer to look at some local results and see what we can collectively glean from that, and few results are currently as surprising as a few local races.
First, it’s worth mentioning that there are currently many votes to count, amongst which are the early ballots mailed in or dropped off late, and there is speculation that those may break towards Democrats. That said, current trends are rather telling and without a major reversal it seems as though most of these results will hold.
For starters, in one of the bigger shocks of the year it looks as though Scottsdale will have a new mayor next year. Challenger Lisa Borowsky took a lead over incumbent Dave Ortega that started after the initial vote count announcement yesterday and has widened in subsequent counts. She is currently up by seven percentage points, or over 6,500 votes, more than reversing her margin of loss four years ago on a percentage basis. It appears as though this one is about over.
Not to be outdone in the surprise category, the results so far to fill two seats at the Scottsdale City Council are raising a few eyebrows. Mary McAllen is currently in the first position with a slim (and thus far decreasing) lead over Adam Kwasman. Incumbent Tammy Caputi sits about 2,800 votes out of the 3rd place position, with Tom Durham, who famously told voters to vote for both McAllen and Caputi in order to keep Kwasman out, in a distant fourth. While not an insurmountable lead, Caputi will need to make up considerable ground over the next few counts in order to avoid a loss.
In order to round out the trio of surprises in Scottsdale elections, propositions 490 and 491 were amongst the best performers of the night, easily doing away with their opposition. Prop 490 has earned 59.3% of the vote as of the time of writing, and Prop 491 is nearly 67% support. While well regarded and generally thought likely to pass, these margins seem to be a statement of some sort.
Lastly, Paradise Valley will have a new mayor next year as well, as in their run-off election Mark Stanton has defeated Anna Thomasson by a 7.3% margin at the time of writing. This serves as an impressive turnaround from even just a year ago, when many saw his pursuit of the office as an uphill battle.
While the Paradise Valley result shouldn’t result in a massive shake-up in the town, suffice it to say that Scottsdale has so far voted for change, and soon the difficult work on turning campaign promises into action will begin.