The Mysterious Duval – Douglas Voters of Pima County

How many folks do you know who voted for Fred Duval, but also for Diane Douglas? Yeah, same here. How about Goddard – Douglas? Rotellini – Douglas?

Believe it or not, these voters do exist. There are thousands of them. Weird, huh? You know what’s even weirder? Almost all of them live in Pima County.

Maybe my tinfoil hat is on a bit too tight, but the county-by-county vote totals in the Supe race are kind of bizarre.

At this point, Garcia is leading in red Maricopa County by a slender margin, 374,068 to 373,998, but losing statewide. I don’t remember a Democrat in recent history who lost statewide after carrying Maricopa. Ordinarily, Maricopa is a much greater challenge than the state as a whole.

So what happened? Is Maricopa is not as much redder than the rest of the state as it used to be? Maybe, but the other three Democratic candidates all did better statewide than they did in Maricopa, whereas the opposite was true for Garcia.

To understand this, you’d have to understand Pima County, and why it had so many voters who voted for the odd combination of Fred Duval and Diane Douglas. I didn’t check every single county for all four statewide Democratic candidates, but I sampled quite a few, and the clear pattern is that in each county other than Pima, Garcia performs the best, followed by Goddard and Rotellini, with Duval performing the worst.

But in Pima County, Garcia’s performance is about equal to Duval’s and far worse than Goddard’s and Rotellini’s. Yes, Garcia carried Pima, but by far less than he logically should have based on his statewide performance.

When you compare the vote totals for the  Guv race and the Supe race in Maricopa, it’s apparent there were tens of thousands of voters who split their ticket Ducey – Garcia. Makes sense. I know people who voted that way. There may have been some Duval – Douglas voters, but they were vastly outnumbered by the Ducey – Garcia crowd. You get the same result in Maricopa when you compare the Supe Race to the AG or Secretary of State race.

But in Pima, it’s almost the opposite. There were thousands of Goddard – Douglas voters and Rotellini – Douglas voters in Pima. And there’s no way to know for sure without looking at individual ballots, but there likely were several thousand Duval – Douglas voters as well, enough to cancel the Ducey – Garcia voters, whom we know do exist.

So, where are all those mysterious Duval – Douglas voters in Pima? Has anyone met one of them?

8 thoughts on “The Mysterious Duval – Douglas Voters of Pima County”

  1. The voters were seriously misled in her advertising. She was linked to education, not her stained glass business. It shouldn’t be allowed.

  2. Could it be an anti-ASU thing? I know it’s sounds far-fetched (and dumb) but David wears his ASU loyalty on his sleeve.

  3. Fred DuVal grew up in Tucson. His father was the founding dean of the College of Medicine, and his parents were very engaged in the community. I suspect many Republicans in Pima County voted for him for that reason. (I think I’m following your question.)

  4. If you look at the Governor’s race, you will see there were thousands of Libertarian voters. If you filter both the Governor’s and Education Superintendent’s races for early and then polling place votes, it appears to me that Douglas’s votes did not come from Ducey voters but rather from Libertarian voters.

    • I assume you meant to say “DuVal” rather than “Ducey” in your last sentence, but that doesn’t explain what happened. If you look at the other two races, AG and Sec State, it’s clear that there were thousands who voted for Goddard and/or Rotellini, but also for Douglas. That’s a really weird combination. It happened in every county, but the frequency at which it happened in Pima is geometrically greater than anywhere else in the state.

  5. No one would be surprised to learn that an Arizona Republican office seeker may have cheated. Was Nathan Sproul working on the Douglas campaign? Hopefully, Garcia is aware of this.

  6. One supposes the Douglas votes are really anti-Common Core votes. Perhaps Pima voters are more driven by how Common Core was rolled out and supported in southern Arizona than the standards themselves? They will regret their votes. Wait until she starts hiring like-minded parents to fill offices at the DOE…..

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