Yesses and Noooos: Another Look at the April 2nd Election

Before we really get going here. This post doesn't aim to rehash the arguments that have already been had about the stadium vote. Apologies if you want to read more about "billionaires" or "they'll move if Yes loses". If Sunday newspapers still ran profiles on upcoming elections, they'd cover all of that. That being said, there will probably be some common arguments touched upon anyways because you can't help yourself sometimes. (Also, if I had to pick a header photo, can we get Steve Kornacki here?)

First, the question on the ballot, as a reminder of what voters will see on Tuesday.

"Shall the County of Jackson repeal its countywide capital improvements sales tax of three-eighths of one percent (3/8%) authorized by Section 67.700 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri and impose as a parks sales tax of three eighths of one percent (3/8%) authorized by Section 644.032 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri for a period of 40 years, to provide funding for park improvements, consisting of (1) site preparation and clearance, developing, constructing, furnishing, improving, equipping, repairing, maintaining, and operating both Arrowhead Stadium and its surrounds, and a new baseball stadium and its surrounds, to retain the Kansas City Chiefs in Jackson County, Missouri and the Kansas City Royals in Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri pursuant to long term leases; and (2) refinancing debt obligations previously incurred to finance or refinance improvements to the Harry S Truman Sports Complex?"

There is a certain amount of legalese worth noting about repealing the tax and replacing it with the same tax and new directions. The current tax is set to expire in 2031, so I'd guess they'd have to repeal it in order to do what they have to do before the expiration of the current tax. I'm not entirely convinced there are a lot of voters living under rocks who will misread the question but there'll probably be a few. I'm sure the yes side doesn't necessarily mind the wording at least right now. That opinion might be different on Wednesday morning.

As for the electorate. Jackson County has two election boards (most counties only have one). The Kansas City Election board has 436 precincts voting at 66 polling locations for 212,494 voters. The Jackson County Election Board, which covers Jackson County (except Kansas City) has 239,254 registered voters last November.

Back in November 2022, The JCEB portion of the county saw 56% of registered voters turn out for the midterm elections. The KCEB portion of the county saw 38% of registered voters turn out for the midterms. The difference of 131780 votes in JCEB vs 86724 votes in KCEB. Of course you might note, this is April. Last April, the JCEB side had a 14.6% voter turnout (34,640 votes) vs the KCEB's side's 13.8% voter turnout (29,371 votes) on an election day where Kansas City was voting to narrow fields for city offices. Two years ago in April, it was 14.6% in JCEB (34564 votes) vs 7% in KCEB (15,509 votes) on a much quieter election day in Kansas City. There have likely been days when the turnout is higher in KC than the rest of Jackson County, but several stars have to align.

Every election has certain bits of conventional wisdom that will be put to the test by actual votes. Some wisdom holds up. Some wisdom does not.

Conventional Wisdom #1: There will be more votes in the JCEB portion of the county than the KCEB portion.

Now, it's not a blowout every time, as you could see from April 2023. But even then, there are also more voters in the JCEB portion than the KCEB

When it comes to turnout on Tuesday, a relevant question is: What else is on the ballot this Tuesday?

KCEB: Hickman Mills School District (28212 voters), Grandview School District (8463 voters), Center School District (17106 voters, Lee's Summit School district (1962 voters) and the Independence district (1290 voters). 57033 registered voters will have something else on their ballot, the other 155,461 will only have the Stadium question on the ballot.

(BTW, the KCEB poll log PDF has been valuable for the purposes of this post)

JCEB: Blue Springs is voting on a Mayor. Buckner is voting on an unopposed Mayor/Aldermen, Grain Valley is voting on a Mayor/Aldermen, Grandview is voting on Aldermen, Greenwood has an unopposed Mayor/Aldermen, Independence is voting for the City Council, Lake Lotawana is voting on unopposed Aldermen, Lake Tapawingo is voting on unopposed Aldermen, Lee's Summit is voting on the City Council, Lone Jack is voting on Aldermen, Oak Grove is voting on an unopposed Mayor/Aldermen, Sugar Creek is voting on one unopposed Alderman, there's 5 people running for 3 spots in super-tiny River Bend, the Trustees are unopposed in Sibley, they're unopposed in Unity Village. Yes there are a lot of small places around here and they're mostly all voting on something else.

and now.. the School Districts. Independence School District has 7 candidates for 3 spots. Hickman Mills has 5 candidates for 2 spots and 2 candidates for 1 spot. Grandview has 2 unopposed candidates and a bond question. Lone Jack has 3 candidates for 2 spots and a Levy question. Grain Valley has 4 candidates for 2 spots and a Levy question. Oak Grove has 4 candidates for 2 spots. Lee's Summit has 6 candidates for 2 spots.

The KCEB Sample Ballot

The JCEB Notice of General Municipal Election

A significant portion of the county already had something on the ballot before the Stadium Question made it to the ballot. For whatever turnout percentage that municipal elections and school board elections bring to the table.

Considering the big picture of the April 2nd election, it would be a significant surprise if a majority of the electorate wasn't Suburban JCEB voters.

For the record, what turnout did we see in April 2006? In KCEB, 54,414 votes out of 210,968 registered voters, a turnout of 26%. In JCEB, 94,672 votes out of 214,849 voters, a turnout of 44%. For a variety of reasons that I won't get into right now, there are huge gaps in voter turnout between Kansas City and Suburban Jackson County.

Conventional Wisdom #2: Yes will do better in Kansas City than the Suburbs.

There is a little bit of wiggle room here. That expectation does not say that Yes will lose Suburban Jackson County. But if Yes loses Suburban Jackson County, it has to make up for that among voters closer to Downtown.

Let's go back to the KCEB poll log for some numbers in Kansas City.

Despite the fact that there are Wards 1 and 26 in Kansas City, Kansas City has 25 Wards in Jackson County (Ward 21 was the old name for the Northland). Which likely mostly exist to vote for party committee spots. In theory, the wards are supposed to be equalish in population, but some will have more voters than others (Ward 8 has 11,661 voters and Ward 13 has 4466 voters, for example) for various reasons.

Another element in the campaign that could boost Yes is the talk about the quality of the Truman Sports Complex location isn't necessarily the main theme of the campaign. It's come up. The Chiefs side of the campaign has talked about opportunities or the lack of them at the current site. I'd imagine there are limits to how much you can talk about location quality when a majority of the voters are closer to the 'bad' location than they are to Downtown. When I was a kid, I accidentally banged a pole that had a bees nest in it and got stung. You don't intentionally bang bee's nests.

Conventional Wisdom #3: Whatever Yes loses in the Crossroads has to be made up for in other parts of KCMO

The actual precinct which the Stadium site is located in has 2780 voters (Ward 1, Precinct 7). It is voting at the World War I Museum with 2 other precincts. Which means 5468 registered voters are assigned to that polling location.

That polling place makes up more than half of the 1st Ward even though the Crossroads precinct makes up a little over 1/4th of voters). But other KCMO wards that are West of Troost bring a lot of voters and a possibility for a strong Yes vote.

Wards 4/5 are directly south of Ward 1. There are 10340 voters in Ward 4 and 10599 voters in Ward 5. Ward 6 has 9931 voters. Ward 8 has 11661 voters. Ward 9 has 10368 voters. Ward 10 has 7770 voters. That's 60669 registered voters in-between 31st, Troost/Holmes, 435 and the State Line. That's Brookside. That's a lot of wealthy people with nice lawns (also some people who are not technically wealthy but probably have nice lawns too). If Yes doesn't win there, it's gonna be a long night at the Yes party.

Not to leave out the voters living north of the Stadium site. Ward 11 includes a polling place with nearly 8100 registered voters voting at one location (The Garrison Community Center). Including 2364 voters in the River Market and 2543 voters in the very downtown Precinct 13. It will be interesting to find out the enthusiasm for the Royals going downtown among people right next to the Crossroads area.

Conventional Wisdom #4: Voter turnout will be important in East Kansas City.

I believe this has technically been something that has been important in pretty much every election that kinda-sorta depends on voters that live East of Troost. If you are reading this and are unfamiliar with Kansas City residential patterns, it's a segregated city in the sense that you can cross Troost and either go to heavily White or heavily Black parts of town,. This Yes campaign has the support of various Political Action Committees such as Freedom Inc, La Raza, and PACs which are linked to a Hickman Mills School Board member. The Royals also contributed thousands of dollars to these groups. These groups have mailed literature supporting Yes. We can make up percentages if we want to guess about how effective these group endorsements will be. Ultimately voter turnout will be the big factor in some parts of KCMO and the Royals are going to groups who have turned out some voters in the past to hope that they can boost the numbers for Yes.

In the spirit of an attorney's commercial, past results do not exactly indicate anything about future results. But.. let's take a look at a few KCMO votes on sports and sports venues.

Back in August 2004, there was a KCMO vote which led to the construction of the Sprint Center. It passed by a bit. The best parts of KCMO in regards to "Yes" for the Sprint Center were between downtown and 435 in Brookside. With 70%+ of the vote favoring the Sprint Center in parts of that area. The only parts of KCMO which voted no were in the Northeast and close to it (Wards 2/11/12/13/14), Ward 18 on the Eastside, and Ward 25 in the part of KCMO that's wedged in-between Grandview and Lee's Summit.

The parts of KCMO which were the most in-favor of the Sprint Center might need to be the most in-favor of a Royals ballpark across the highway from the T-Mobile (Sprint) Center. The farther away you got from downtown, the more so-so the margins were (50% and a win in Ward 24 East of Raytown being an example).

Several months after the Sprint Center vote, there was also a Bistate 2 vote in November 2004, which passed in Jackson County and failed in the other 4 counties (with the highest No% coming in Wyandotte County). That's probably a reason why this vote isn't Bistate (among all the other reasons why parts of the Metro don't play nice more often), and why this vote isn't gonna take place on the same ballot as a Presidential election. From what i've read, perhaps an arrangement of 5 counties where 1 of them gets the sports and the others get vaguely defined arts projects was sorta doomed from the start?

So there has been a Royals ballpark funding vote which went down where they got off the canvas and voted among just the county that passed Bistate 2.

Now, the April 2006 vote is sort of a different universe from the April 2024 vote as April 2006 was a status quo vote and not touching the rail about a downtown ballpark.

Question 1 (Stadium Renovations) won in 21 of 25 Kansas City Wards. Losing only in Ward 1 (Downtown), Ward 4 (next to Downtown), and Ward 11/12 (Northeast). The highest Yes votes were Ward 3 (a little more Eastern), Ward 9 (Brookside), Ward 14 (Eastern/Northeastern), Wards 16/17 (Eastern KC), and Ward 22 (In-between Grandview and Kansas). As for the rest of the county, it passed everywhere else in Jackson County except the rural Fort Osage and Van Buren Townships in the Northeastern and Southeastern corners of Jackson County.

Overall, Question 1 won 55-45 in KCEB (29k to 24k) and won 53-47 in JCEB (49k to 44k).

Question 2 (The Rolling Roof) was a little rockier. It won in 13 of 25 KC Wards. The best Rolling Roof wards were also Wards 3, 7, 14, 16, 17. Also the Rolling Roof lost in the rest of the county except for Brookings Township (Raytown).

Conventional Wisdom #5: The Chiefs can carry this question over the finish line.

Well, provided no quarterback sneaks are involved. But if you've just watched TV ads and you don't watch the news, you might think this is mainly about the Chiefs. The people running the Yes campaign likely have the data that tells them that in a short campaign, it's a better play to lean on the very successful Chiefs to pull the proposal for the much less successful Royals across the finish line. Will this sentiment end up boosting the Yes %s in the Suburbs or in Ward 23 (7829 voters including the 0 voters who have registered to vote as residents of the Truman's Sports Complex). Will the parts of Kansas City next to the Sports Complex vote more Yes for the Chiefs or No to oppose moving the Royals downtown?

The Chiefs role in this campaign, in some ways, is sorta riding shotgun while being the Fonz. The Yes campaign address is Kauffman Stadium. The Royals are donating the money to various allied groups. The Chiefs are simultaneously the more popular part of the campaign, the part of the campaign that is talked about in the commercials, yet the Royals are putting in more shoe leather to get this passed. It's possible the Chiefs get the credit if it passes and the Royals get the blame if it fails. Success has many fathers, Failure is an orphan.

Conventional Wisdom #6: Almost everybody who is voting has made up their minds by now.

In the world of campaigning, the last weekend or two is GOTV weekend. It's about talking to the people that you probably haven't talked to enough in the last 2/4 years to get them to vote for you/your candidate again. Before the GOTV time, some campaigns pretty much try to find all the unknowns and figure out if they're supportive or not. When it comes to how to spend time, campaigns have sorta figured out it's a better use of time to remind their supporters to vote than to talk to Dave for the 5th time as he waffles between two options. The Royals performances in early games likely isn't moving the needle much.

Now, if the election is Bush/Gore levels of close, everything is to credit/blame for Yes/No winning. If it isn't then it probably didn't matter a lot. There aren't voters circling the parking lot at 6:45pm that are voting based off of how Alec Marsh's first 2 innings of pitching went.

My perspective from the outside of either campaign is that the Yes campaign is probably a little more organized than the No campaign even with all the organized actions of a KC Tenants group which gets some attention. Yes is obviously much better funded than No. The No side of this question is probably gonna be a one day sort of coalition between parts of downtown and the suburbs. The No side of the question not being overly organized or cohesive could end up being to their credit or detriment based on the final results. In politics, the line between genius and idiocy is winning vs losing.

What would a Yes victory look like in regards to their support in the County?

Very likely it would involve strong percentages in Brookside/West of Troost, favorable percentages in Eastern KC, in a sufficient enough total to counteract the results in the rest of the county. Or possibly a result where the No vote isn't all that strong in the Suburbs and Yes can get the votes from KC to pull it off.

What would a No victory look like in regards to their support in the County?

Probably a high no percentage in the majority of the county that lives outside of 435, or a solid No percentage to go with a Yes having a more tepid response closer to downtown. Perhaps an inverse situation from the Yes scenario.

Could some of the preceding become totally wrong once actual results come in?

More than likely, yes. The actual result won't be "Patrick Mahomes spins a ball on his finger and it passes with 2/3rds of the vote" but certain parts of this result can't really be predicted until the results come in because there isn't a history of votes on downtown baseball stadiums in this county to draw from. The result can only be guessed until then and sometimes guesses are right and sometimes they are wrong. There'll be a pretty solid KCMO turnout for an election where most KCMO voters don't have anything else on the ballot. That's more than enough to make something wrong here.

What's the weather like for Tuesday?

Yes, weather can be important for election days. This might matter for some flaky voters. The forecast on my phone is currently a high of 52 with rain in the morning. Now the latter might impact turnout when the polls open at 6am for the morning rush. The rain will taper off closer to midday. If you want a high voter turnout, 52 is probably not what you'd want, but it could be worse in April. I'd imagine the impact of it being cold and rainy would be pretty similar all over the county, but when one part of the county typically turns out more for elections, it could tilt the overall electorate more towards the Suburbs.

What other election stuff do we probably need to know?

Missouri has had photo ID for voting for a few years now. So you'll need one of those. There are ways to change registration on election day if you've moved within KCMO or within non-KCMO Jackson County (but not if you moved from KCMO to non-KCMO Jackson County, IIRC). For best results *PLEASE DO NOT LET SOMEONE ON A SPORTS BLOG BE YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR ADJUSTING YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION, CALL SOMEBODY*.

How does an election night in Jackson County play out once the Polls close at 7pm Tuesday?

Since it has been a few years since a really close Missouri election, I guess we'll have to do a refresher course here.

The first results reported will almost certainly be Jackson County Election Board absentee/early votes. How ever many those are. That will set a tone for how much opposition there is in the suburbs to this question. Then a little bit later, you'll see the Kansas City Election Board report their first results. The KCEB results might move a little faster than their November General Election norm due to the succinct ballots in most of the city. But KCEB will report a bunch of precincts in chunks once they get going and JCEB might just report in smaller chunks depending on precincts getting their boxes to the Independence Square. It's sorta like Cricket, one side goes first and the other has to equalize. This is a bad analogy because most of you do not follow Cricket.

We'll likely have a sense of which way this is going by the end of Royals/Orioles and by the 9pm Fox 4 news. If the "suburbs no, city yes" conventional wisdom plays out, then the early results will have a stronger no vote than the final results and it'll be about if the KCEB results can fill the gap or not.

Also, if you want to go really deep, you can keep an eye on the precincts totals in other races to get a sense of what could be in/out for the Stadium vote. But that idea might work better when you're trying to get a sense of where St. Louis County is reporting for a statewide candidate than for a county election where a chunk of the voters are only voting on this question.

Also you likely won't need to know this information, but any result of more than 1% is out of the recount zone. Any result within one half of one percent is in the zone where a recount could happen. Although how this would work for a ballot question is unknown to me. In most scenarios, this won't matter due to the result not being in the recount zone.

Do I have a prediction on the overall result?

Hell no I don't. I think No wins my polling place, but that doesn't necessarily doom Yes in the rest of the county. The polling says 47/46. Which feels good enough for anybody to spur turnout (even if you get the occasional person who insists that 500 responses for Jackson County isn't enough). Much like every election ever, this will come down to turnout. It's up to the voters who show up to determine if they think Yes has made a case that they can support or not. So don't accidentally knock down the JCEB website at 7:01 waiting for the first results. Because that website is my election night party.

But as every election says, this is the most important election of our lifetime and every vote will matter so please get out and vote by 7pm Tuesday night/