Voter Turnout in Nov 2023 Election
(Kurt Metzger, Nov. 8, 2023)
Oakland County, MI – Another off-year November election is in the books, and I am here, once more, to discuss voter turnout. Voters in 30 of the 51 Oakland County cities and townships went to the polls yesterday to vote for mayors, city council and commission members, tax proposals, marijuana amendments, and a host of other proposals. A number of communities had no real contests, as mayoral, council and commissioner races were uncontested. Twenty-one communities had no contests at all.
The graph below ranks the 31 communities on voter turnout percentages. While I would judge turnout to be rather normal for an odd year November, there was a great deal of variation across communities. While turnout tended to be higher for communities with real contests and issues to be decided, historically high turnout communities – Lake Angeles, Huntington Woods and Pleasant Ridge for example – still fell in the top half despite having no real contests.
Lake Angelus, with its 323 registered voters, led all others at 61 percent, despite having only a council race where 3 candidates ran for 3 positions.
Coming in a distant second was Rochester (41.3 percent), where an amazing 89.2 percent of voters rejected recreational marijuana.
Birmingham and Keego Harbor also had marijuana on the ballot, and both voted it down (not as much as Rochester, however). Five other communities – Northville, Lathrup Village, Orion township, Royal Oak and Rochester Hills – had turnout rates between 30 and 40 percent.
Royal Oak voters narrowly approved both a road funding millage and ranked choice voting. In Rochester Hills, the only mayoral candidate on the ballot had just over half the number of votes than did write-ins. As longtime mayor Bryan Barnett was unable to run again after two full terms, he launched a write-in campaign which appears to have been quite successful.
On the low end of the turnout scale, we have Royal Oak township, where voters in one precinct were asked to vote on Oak Park Schools’ request to continue its non-homestead tax. Hazel Park, Walled Lake and Auburn Hills had turnout of less than 15 percent, followed by seven communities that fell between 15 and 20 percent. While Walled Lake had no real contest (3 people vying for 3 seats), both Hazel Park and Auburn Hills had council contests.
I would like to end with a brief discussion of precinct turnout rates and how they can differ across a community. I have chosen Ferndale, where a mayoral and council contest brought out 23.9 percent of registered voters (just ahead of Huntington Woods’ 23.8 percent with uncontested mayor and council contests). Ferndale has nine precincts, with turnouts ranging from 16.2 to 35.8 percent. There is a clear difference in voter engagement between the five precincts east of Woodward (19 percent turnout) and the four precincts west of Woodward (29 percent turnout). Knowing this is a great opportunity for the newly elected officials to look at how to engage the entire community.
For election results, check out the Oakland County Times election results post.
For more stories about the Census and other interesting numbers, visit the Data-Base Stories Archives on Oakland County Times. Thanks to Data Expert Kurt Metzger for this work!
