And the winners are…
"Sure, I've been called a xenophobe, but the truth is, I'm not. I honestly just feel that America is the best country and the other countries aren't as good. That used to be called patriotism." - Kenny Powers
On Tuesday, we will do our patriotic duty and head out the polls to vote. There are some pretty good local races this year, and I expect that will generate a pretty decent turnout…or at least I hope it will. To try and get an idea of who the winners might be, I thought it might be fun to do a little polling on the site. As I said when I first opened up the polls, this is COMPLETELY unscientific, prone to be completely inaccurate, and done simply to see how close we get to actually predicting the outcome.
I had hoped to get at least 100 votes on each race. I figured that with 100 people voting, that might be enough to represent a decent cross-section of the county and maybe give us a shot at accurately predicting some of these races. I never really imagined that each poll would get 100 votes…actually, I wasn’t sure if ANY of the polls would get 100 votes…but as it turns out, a few of them went over 100 votes, a few more were VERY close to 100, and most of the others got over 50, so I’m pretty tickled.
So, here are the results as of today, Sunday, May 16, 2010. (I will leave the polls active until after the election is over to see if the numbers change…)
| Poll | Number of Votes | Projected Winner (margin) |
| Sheriff | 157 | Kenny “Gravedigger” Perry (24 votes) |
| Coroner | 127 | Jeff Cantrell (6 votes) |
| Jailer | 94 | Jimmy Darrell Easterling (49 votes) |
| County Attorney | 87 | Kim Ison Gevedon (3 votes) |
| Magistrate, Dist.2 | 57 | Jon Brown (4 votes) |
| Magistrate, Dist.3 | 53 | Stanley Riggsby (10 votes) |
| Magistrate, Dist.4 | 50 | Frankie W. Spencer (20 votes) |
| Magistrate, Dist.5 | 58 | Anthony Lykins (20 votes) |
| United States Representative (5th District) | 51 | Kenneth Stepp (16 votes) |
| United States Senator | 95 | Daniel Mongiardo (D) (6 votes) |
So what does it all mean? Who the hell knows. I guess we will find out for sure Tuesday. 🙂
It is clear that the 2 races getting the most attention, at least in terms of the number of votes cast, are Sheriff and Coroner, followed closely by Jailer and County Attorney. Those numbers for those 4 polls are certainly boosted by the fact that these are races voted on by the entire county, whereas the Magistrate races are only being voted on by voters in those districts. Still, based on the numbers, none of the races seem to be getting as much attention as Sheriff and Coroner, which is sort of what I would have expected. I actually would have thought that County Attorney would have been the race with the next highest number of votes, but it is pretty close to the number for Jailer.
I’m actually surprised by the number of votes in the US Senate race. I haven’t heard a lot of folks talking about this race around here, but it looks like at least as far as the folks visiting the site and taking part in this poll are concerned, it is a pretty important race.
There are some surprises…or at least they are surprises to me. I won’t go into specifics, but needless to say, I’ll be watching the actual polls pretty closely come Tuesday.
It is important to remember that for several of these races, they are basically a dead heat. Take the County Attorney race, for example. The 3 vote separation is a 4% difference, which for most polls would certainly be within the margin for error. This is similar to the Coroner’s race, where the difference in votes amounts to a 47% to 42% advantage for Jeff Cantrell over Raymond Vancleave, so it is pretty tight, as well. In the Sheriff’s race, the separation is 24 votes, but it represents 45% to 29% advantage for Kenny Perry over Mickey Whitt, which is pretty substantial.
Now, I’m guessing that the margin of error for the polls posted here are like +/- 25%. 🙂 … or more … so … take these results with a grain of salt and remember…it was all just for fun. One of the main problems is that I really have no way to tell for certain if the votes represent a good cross-section of all areas of Morgan County or if certain races are being affected by where the majority of the people who took part in the polls live. One positive sign is that each of the Magistrate races seemed to get roughly the same amount of votes. Now, what that SHOULD mean is that there WAS a fairly good representation in the polls of voters from all across the county. But, again, I have not way to know for sure, so…all for fun.
Regardless of how these polls turned out, everyone please be sure to turn out to the ACTUAL polls on Tuesday and do what I’ve tried to promote since starting this site…make YOUR voice heard in Morgan County.