My my, who would have predicted that Beth Van Duyne would come up with the most votes in the mayoral election? Well, aside from her campaign, that is.

http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/TX/Dallas/30600/44744/en/summary.html

Well, I guess I was wrong about the mayor’s election. I thought Putnam’s popularity was higher than that. I should have guessed that Van Duyne’s turnout would be better; after all she seems to have a solid constituency. In truth I think her results were due to getting out the people who are behind her rather than turning a majority of average Irving voters into her supporters.

Voter turnout was about a third of what it was in 2010, which in most precincts was only 25-33% anyway. I think if more of Irving turned out to vote for these things, probably Gears would have won a clear victory. At least I called two of the races correctly; Cannaday and Webb both won by handy margins. The fact that the votes split 50-50 between Stewart and Gutierrez, I chalk up to people randomly voting for somebody they don’t know. I could be wrong though; I’ll check out precinct results when I have the time and see exactly how it went.

The remaining question is what will happen in the mayoral runoff election. How will Putnam and Spink’s votes redistribute themselves? The main thing that all three challengers were going for was anti-Gears sentiment. Does that mean they can combine and overthrow the incumbent? Will that many people show up? Will they prefer Gears to Van Duyne? I don’t know. I’ll try to find out though and have some news on that pretty soon.

As for IISD action, nothing that interesting except that guy Steven Jones who made an ass of himself won, much to the dismay of people who speak their names properly regardless of whoever is listening.