viaduct vs. tunnel, the return of the numbers games
Remember that Viaduct replacement vote? Although the goofy ballot design prevented us from knowing exact voter intent, both the viaduct and the tunnel lost convincingly (just not to each other) and everyone had an opinion on the deeper meaning of the results. Stefan Sharkansky looked at the preliminary spreadsheets and concluded that somewhere between 21 and 31 percent of voters said “NO-NO”. [soundpolitics]
Today, on the occasion of the final tally, the number crunchers at Sightline Institute take their own look and come up with 36% in the NO-NO column. [dailyscore] These calculations also assume that 12% really really wanted a waterfront highway of some sort so badly that they voted for both choices.
While we’re dredging this up, why not take a look at the pretty graph of the results that the P-I produced [#] shortly after the election? Marvel at the north-south line bisecting the city at Aurora and marvel (as Dylan did) at the drastic contrast in the popularity of the viaduct west of this line and the unpopularity east of it and speculate on the growing I-5 divide. Then wonder what’s actually going to happen. I still have no idea. Does anyone?
It’s pretty simple:
The people who use the viaduct the most voted for replacement.
The people who don’t use it don’t care if it falls down and we have to drive over the concrete rubble to get around, so long as it doesn’t cost anything.
And that, in a nutshell, is Seattle.