The darkest of horses

Well, it looks like Michael Taylor got as many votes in my poll as he may get in the election at large Tuesday. (I’m only kidding – sort of.)

There are only two conclusions I can draw: either people REALLY liked my interview with the guy I posted Friday or they’re messing with my poll. Aside from the complete outlier of Taylor winning, the other seven candidates seemed to settle into the order they’ve had all along – the other notable trend is the waning popularity of Orville Dryden as he fell perilously close to missing the top 6 in the poll (assuming Taylor was an outlier, otherwise Orville finishes out of the money.) Tim Spies has also seen a downward trend.

My second possibility becomes more apparent when one looks at the pattern of voting – early on Taylor was in his usual bottom slot before he suddenly surged to the top in just a few hours. And once the field began catching him another spurt placed him well ahead again.

I am pleased that this poll had much more interest in a shorter timeframe, as 392 votes were cast.

And the final poll showed some stark differences due to the leftward influence of Progressive Delmarva. (I think it helped Laura Mitchell a lot, too.) Here’s how they stacked up, with their previous two poll finishes in (parentheses) beforehand.

  1. (7,8) Michael Taylor, 85 votes (21.86%)
  2. (3 – tie,2) Terry Cohen, 64 votes (16.33%)
  3. (8,6 – tie) Laura Mitchell, 54 votes (13.78%)
  4. (3 – tie,1) Muir Boda, 51 votes (13.01%)
  5. (1,3) Tim Spies, 48 votes (12.24%)
  6. (5,5) Joel Dixon, 36 votes (9.18%)
  7. (2,4) Orville Dryden, 34 votes (8.67%)
  8. (6,6 – tie) Bruce Ford, 20 votes (5.1%)

I think a more comprehensive (and perhaps realistic) picture occurs when the three polls I’ve done are combined.

  1. Terry Cohen, 143 votes (17.8%)
  2. Muir Boda, 134 votes (16.7%)
  3. Tim Spies, 126 votes (15.7%)
  4. Orville Dryden, 106 votes (13.2%)
  5. Michael Taylor, 101 votes (12.6%)
  6. Joel Dixon, 80 votes (10.0%)
  7. Laura Mitchell, 70 votes (8.7%)
  8. Bruce Ford, 43 votes (5.4%)

If I were to make a prediction, my guess would be that flipping Mitchell and Taylor around would probably put the actual order of finish pretty close – I think Taylor and Ford will be the two odd men out, while the three who have ran before make up your top three primary finishers. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Spies in second and Boda in third, though – it’s a hunch based on Camden’s voting strength. Orville Dryden will probably be the closest to the top three, but Mitchell or Dixon could end up in fourth as well – that order is the most difficult to figure out.

But before I wrap this primary coverage up I want to thank Two Sentz and those over at Progressive Delmarva for their assistance. There will be more polling over the five weeks leading up to the general election April 5th, but I may change a few poll parameters around based on how this went.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.