City Council District 14. (City of Dallas)
The race of the 14th district council seat, which spans parts of East Dallas, Uptown and Downtown, has gotten heated, with Super PAC dollars and accusations flying back and forth between incumbent Philip Kingston and challenger Matt Wood.
Looking at history, May elections fail to draw huge crowds to the polls. It was a special election that named Laura Miller as mayor in 2002 that brought out the city’s largest number of voters this century, when 21.7 percent of those registered decided to cast a ballot. Since then, the number of voters coming out for council races has dropped, to 12 percent in 2007, 10 percent in 2010 and just over 6 percent in the 2015 council election. According to the Dallas Observer, Dallas had the lowest voter turnout to a mayoral election of any major U.S. city in 2015.
With just days before the May 6 City Council race, certain precincts have the ability to tip the political power scales just through their willingness to come out and vote. We crunched the numbers from the 2015 council race to see which neighborhoods are most likely to vote in District 14, and which are more likely to skip out on election day (remember, these numbers reflect the precinct data, so neighborhoods are estimated). The percentage below is based on the number of registered voters who actually cast a ballot in 2015.
Lakewood Hills (precinct 1050 with 148 registered voters and 1076 with 1,800 registered voters and) is the most civilly active neighborhood with 12.8 and 10.7 percent casting a ballot, respectively.
Samuell Grand west (precinct 1073 with 948 registered voters) had 9.1 percent (precinct split between District 2 and 14).
Lower Greenville (precinct 2040 with 1,501 registered voters) and Junius Heights (precinct 1076 with 882 registered voters) were tied with 7.7 percent.
City Place east (precinct 1118 with 581 registered voters) had 7.4 percent.
Bryan Place (precinct 3009 with 1,843 registered voters) had 6.7 percent.
Knox Henderson (precinct 1019 with 2,294 registered voters) had 5.7 percent.
Munger Place (precinct 1131 with 640 registered voters) had 5.6 percent.
Lakewood Country Club area (precinct 1023 with 1,845 registered voters) had 5.5 percent.
Glencoe (precinct 2039 with 2,577 registered voters) had 5.1 percent.
Vickery Place (precinct 2038 with 2,922 registered voters and 1017 with 1,162 voters) had 4.3 percent.
East of SMU (precinct 2033 with 1,375 registered voters and 2035 with 1,191 registered voters) had 3.6 percent.
Northeast Dallas (precinct 2032 with 1,873 registered voters and 1017 with 1,162 voters) had 3.2 percent.
The Village Apartments (precinct 2031 with 3,120 registered voters and 1017 with 1,162 voters) had 2.6 percent.
East Dallas, however, is more likely to vote than District 14 residents in Uptown or Downtown. Check out this interactive election map for council districts, early polling locations and more.
