The Jacksonville Mayor's race: a first look at the results.

While most of the news is good for Democrats, there are some areas were Democrats need to improve.

Donna Deegan’s win as the next mayor of Jacksonville was a tremendous boost in the arm for downtrodden Democrats in Florida. As Kartik Krishnaiyer said in The Florida Squeeze, this win for the Democrats is the most significant win in decades. Granted, it’s only the most significant due to Democrats’ lackluster performance over the last 30 years, to put it lightly. But what information can Democrats glean from this victory? I’ll be looking over the good, the bad, and the unpopular when it comes to the race for Jacksonville Mayor.

But before we continue, if you would like to see the comparison between the first and second rounds, here is a dashboard that will give you a better idea (with a more detailed dashboard coming in the near future when turnout numbers come in).

The Good

There are a number of positives that the Democrats can take away from this win. The first is the fact that Deegan was able to do well among NPAs and possibly some Republicans. One place where this was apparent was in City Council District 11. In the first round, Democrats (Deegan and former State Senator Audrey Gibson) combined to get 44.5% of the vote. However, in the second round, Deegan won 48.8% of the vote, nearly winning the district. Of the extra votes that were cast between the first and second rounds, 59.8% of the excess went to Deegan.

This points out a problem that Democrats statewide have failed to understand, which is that margins matter. In a place like Duval County, you cannot win any race countywide, as either a Democrat or Republican, if you don’t bring down the margins in opposition-leaning areas.

Another district that further hammers this point home is City Council District 5. In the first round, Democrats only won 43.9% of the vote, while Deegan won 49.5% in the second round. This resulted in 75.9% of excess votes going to Deegan. Again, margins matter.

But to only analyze the districts that were “close” would be extremely short-sighted. Take the most Republican City Council district in the first round, District 2, where 65.5% of voters voted for a GOP candidate. In the second round, Deegan lost the district by 20.6% (with 39.7% of the vote total). However, Deegan gained 871 votes in the second round. This shows that raw vote, as well at vote margins, matter. “Winning a district/precinct” is a fatal (and, honestly, stupid) way of approaching an election.

A look at votes gains between the two rounds.

While Deegan’s vote gains in GOP-leaning districts were impressive, her biggest gains were in Democratic areas. In in city’s most Democratic district, District 10, Deegan gained 2,987 votes compared to the first round. In fact, Democratic-leaning precinct gains (over 8k total votes gained) would have put her over the top, and she wouldn’t have needed any votes from the Republican-leaning areas.

The Bad

While Deegan’s overall gains were positive, they could have actually been better. And while Deegan’s biggest gains came from Democratic precincts, these were also the places where most opportunities were lost.

In Duval County, Democrats have a 4.26% voter registration advantage (39.33% Democrats, 35.07% Republican). However, voter turnout favored the Republicans, with the GOP having 3.24% plurality in voter turnout composition. Had the Democrats equaled the GOP total, Deegan could have gained an extra 1%-1.5%. If Democratic turnout replicated the actual voter registration composition of the county, Deegan could have won between 2%-3%. While Deegan’s 52% win is solid, a 55% win would be even more so, and would send a message, not just to Democrats across the state, but to the DNC and other national donors that Florida is still competitive, and 2022 was a one-off.

The Unpopular

One of the theories coming out of this election is that the Deegan campaign had a “good ground game”. But I beg to differ. As mentioned above, the Democratic turnout was not impressive. The Democratic turnout rate was 35%, while the Republican turnout rate was 43%. That is quite a significant gap.

This gap in voter turnout seems to indicate that the ground game was not able to turn out their less active Democratic base voters. Why this is the case? I don’t know. Was their voter targeting bad? Did they not have enough ground resources for such a large electorate? Whatever it is, the ground game did not affect the outcome of the race, and the statistics show that.

Conclusion

So, why did Deegan win? Pure and simple, she was a well-liked candidate, with high name ID, and was able to leverage her previous media experience to capture a lot of earned media. That’s it in a nutshell. She was a good candidate.

For Democrats statewide, they are looking at this win as an indication that the State of Florida is a “purple state”. And while I put those words in quotes, I actually agree with them. However, candidate recruitment matters. This means not going to the well constantly picking someone who is way past their sell by date.

But Democrats are missing the biggest takeaway from this race, and that is that they still cannot turn out their own voters. Yes, while the turnout voter composition was better in this election than in the 2022 election (where the GOP had a 6.54% advantage), the fact is that Republicans still had a higher percentage of the vote composition in a county where the Democrats hold a voter registration edge.

The lack of Democratic turnout (which, in turn, hurts Democratic-leaning NPA turnout) is not being addressed. Instead of Democrats trying to understand who voted for Deegan, resources would best be used to determine why 65% of registered Democrats sat this race out.