Mapping the Making of a Mayor

On May 6, 2023, the City of Richardson elected Bob Dubey as Mayor. Dubey received 4,910 votes (51.6%) to Janet DePuy's 4,610 votes (48.4%).

That's what happened. But how and why are different questions. There's an old political saying, which John F. Kennedy put this way: "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." Almost any tale we tell about how this close race was won could have some truth to it. So I'm going to tell you a tale. Mine is based on a single map. Numbers don't lie, amirite?

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Above is a map of City of Richardson voting precincts. They are colored by the vote totals in each precinct. Dark blue represents precincts where Dubey received 100+ more votes than DePuy. Dark red represents precincts where DePuy received 100+ more votes than Dubey. Paler shades of blue and red represent either closer outcomes or just fewer voters total. In other words, if you want to see where Dubey racked up his winning margin, look at the dark blue precincts. If you want to see where DePuy kept the overall race close, look at the dark red precincts.

Bob Dubey lives in and represents Place 1, the southeast quadrant of the City. Several of his best performing precincts are in Place 1. Janet DePuy lives in and represents Place 3. Two of her best performing precincts are in Place 3. In short, each candidate carried their home precincts by relatively big margins. No surprise there.

Side note: Arefin, selected as Mayor Pro Tem by the new City Council, also lives in Place 1. He was uncontested in his re-election race, but he campaigned as if his future on the City Council depended on it. What was up with that? His home precinct went for Bob Dubey by an even larger margin than Dubey's own home precinct did. Is that connected? Dunno. The map can show correlations, but it is silent on causation.

Another curious side note: The two precincts where Dubey racked up his biggest margins just happen to be precincts connected to G. Scott Waddell, losing candidate for Place 1. One is where Waddell lived for many years and the other is where he recently moved to. Is that connected? Again, dunno. Note that Waddell campaigned with Dubey.

In Dubey's campaign, he relied heavily on his career in the Richardson ISD. Precincts in which are found the three high schools in Richardson all went for Dubey (Pearce HS in a big way, Richardson HS and Berkner HS slightly less so). That horizontal line across north Richardson is the Dallas/Collin county line, north of which is Plano ISD. All but one precinct in the north voted for DePuy. In short, Richardson ISD voted for Dubey and Plano ISD voted for DePuy. Is the overall outcome as simple as that? Again, dunno. The best tales have several entangled subplots.

How about anomalies? In playing the game of "Which Precinct is not like the others?" one precinct stands out. It's Collin County Precinct 110, the Crowley Park precinct. It's in Collin County. It's in Plano ISD. Yet, unlike all other such precincts, it went for Dubey and not just by a little. He received 108 more votes than DePuy there. What is it about that one precinct that makes it different from its Collin County cousins? Dunno. I don't even have suspicions in this case. Anyone else have a theory?

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About that map: it looks amateurish because it is. The base map came from the City of Richardson, but it was colored in by me, using election results that I collected from both Dallas County and Collin County. As far as I know, neither county consolidates all the data needed to declare a winner. The City of Richardson probably does (it needs to certify results, after all), but as far as I know it doesn't make the consolidated precinct information available on the City's website. Bottom line, if there's any problem with the colors on the map, blame it on me. But it shouldn't have to be this hard.