Green represents Borowsky’s top performing precincts, pink represents her worst performing precincts.
It was a truly interesting election season in Scottsdale this year, as incumbent Mayor Dave Ortega was ousted by a significant margin, the city council will welcome three new members, and two propositions won by wide margins. Some of these items are related and some are indicative of wider trends within the city’s electorate. In this three-part series we get in-the-weeds and analyze the results more granularly, starting with the mayoral race.
First, it’s worth mentioning that while Lisa Borowsky’s victory over Mayor Ortega perhaps wasn’t a complete shock, the margin of victory of over 11,000 votes, or over 8%, definitely raised a few eyebrows. Borowsky got less than 40% of the vote in only one of the city’s 62 precincts, demonstrating a broad degree of support throughout the city.
One dynamic that has been a hallmark of local elections has been the bifurcation of the city based on political leaning. The north side of the city has long been Republican-heavy and the south side with a much higher concentration of Democrats. This dynamic played heavily into the performance of not just the mayoral candidates, but also the city council candidates and ballot propositions, as we will talk through in subsequent pieces.
Borowsky’s electoral power base followed this template closely; out of her top 10% performing precincts, only one resided within the Loop 101, and that one (Princess) resides directly inside the bend of the 101. The rest are either directly north or northeast of the bend. Meanwhile, her bottom 10% precincts (or Ortega’s top 10% precincts) never ventured further north than McDonald Drive and were generally concentrated south of Old Town.
One dynamic that had been talked about within political circles but is rarely considered by the average voter is participation by the respective parties, even if the races are non-partisan. Borowsky is a registered Republican with views that align with the local party, and as such she was highlighted on the local party’s voter guides as worthy of their vote. Ortega, a former Democrat-turned-registered independent, was not included on the Democrats version of their voter guide due to his registration status.
That inclusion (and exclusion) alone seems to have had a real impact. In her top precincts Borowsky was able to run up the score, averaging 65% support in those six precincts, while Ortega was only able to average 57% support in his top precincts.
While party participation doesn’t always have a gigantic impact on local races, the precinct-level data seems to strongly imply that Borowsky’s affiliation with one party and Ortega’s lack of affiliation may have tipped the scales considerably in this race.