Inside Elections

Today’s papers were swimming with stories about a Field Poll released today which shows that the number of Vote by Mail voters in California – and in the Bay Area especially – just keeps going up.

We’ll get to the growing numbers of Vote by Mail voters in a minute. But first we want to bring your attention to some interesting demographic trends of Vote by Mail voters that the survey found, which, even more interestingly, San Mateo County doesn’t quite follow.

Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Field Poll, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the demographic of Vote by Mail voters is “very different from the overall population of voters,” and that they “are more likely to be older, whiter, richer and Republican than other voters.”

That’s not entirely so in San Mateo County. While our voter registration rolls don’t track income or race, they do track political party affiliation and date of birth. And contrary to the Field Poll’s findings, our Vote by Mail voters are overwhelmingly middle-aged Democrats.

Almost 50 percent of our 137, 846 permanent Vote by Mail voters are Democrats, nearly double the number of Republicans (28 percent). More than half of the county’s Vote by Mail voters - 55 percent - fall between the ages of 37 and 66. The biggest category of Vote by Mail voters in San Mateo County belongs to Democrats between the ages of 47 and 56, who make up a full 10 percent of the total.

Meanwhile, the Field Poll found that, statewide, 41 percent of permanent Vote by Mail voters are registered Republicans and 40 percent are Democrats. It also found that 31 percent of permanent Vote by Mail voters are 65 or older, compared to just 19 percent of registered voters overall.

According to the survey, there are now more than 4.2 million permanent Vote by Mail voters in the state, which represents more than a quarter (27 percent) of California’s 15.5 million registered voters. Since the law first allowed permanent Vote by Mail status in 2002, the number of permanent Vote by Mail voters has more than tripled.

That’s all good stuff, as we heart Vote by Mail. In San Mateo County, as we reported in an earlier post, a whopping 63 percent of voters in the Nov. 6 Consolidated Municipal, School and Special District Election chose to Vote by Mail. That’s a huge increase over the last election, which saw just under 50 percent.  

The survey also found that the share of people Voting by Mail in primary elections in particular is rapidly rising. Forty seven percent the ballots cast in the 2006 statewide gubernatorial primary were from Vote by Mail voters, up from just 23 percent in 2002.

The timing of this survey release was no accident, as it points out that California’s Vote by Mail voters will be able to vote well in advance of our Feb. 5 Presidential Primary.

“With absentee ballots for California’s Feb. 5 presidential primary going out on Jan. 7, millions of state residents will have a chance to vote ahead of earlier state primaries in Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan, Florida and Maine,” the Sacramento Bee reported today.

California thought they were getting ahead of the pack by scheduling their primary on Feb. 5, but other states followed suit and nabbed even earlier days in 2008. But in his column, Dan Walters of the Bee notes that with “a large number of California’s primary votes being cast by mail in January, however, the state could be an early test of presidential strength, albeit without the results being known until after Election Day.”

Walters also provides some history of Vote by Mail, including how Vote by Mail ballots swung the results of the 1982 governor’s race between Republican George Deukmejian and Democrat Tom Bradley.

In its story on the Field Poll, the San Francisco Chronicle was quick to point out that the San Francisco Bay Area has a huge edge over Los Angeles County in the Vote by Mail arena. Twenty nine percent of permanent Vote by Mail voters live in the Bay Area, compared with just 10 percent in Los Angeles County.

“Because San Francisco and the region’s eight other counties make up nearly one-third of the state’s growing number of mail voters, the results that pop up earliest on Feb. 5 are going to have a distinct Bay Area glow,” the Chronicle reported.

We hope to see the Vote by Mail numbers keep going up in San Mateo County and statewide. Perhaps someday state legislators will consider taking a cue from Oregon and aim for all-mail elections. But until then, regardless of your age or political sway, join the legions!