arjache

So this has been bugging me since last night. There seems to be widespread belief that no/no actually won. I'm not convinced the numbers actually bear that out.

The preliminary election results are as follows:

Issue	No	Yes
Rebuild	55%	45%
Tunnel	70%	30%

Okay, so both the rebuild and the tunnel got voted down. But what happens if you think about it in terms of the different combinations of votes people could have made? For the sake of argument, assume that everybody either voted exclusively for the rebuild or tunnel, or voted No/No - that would mean that nobody voted Yes/Yes, and that all Yes votes can be attributed to one of the two Yes/No combinations.

Combination	% votes
Yes on both	0%
Yes rebuild, no tunnel	45%
No rebuild, yes tunnel	30%
No on both	25%

When you look at it this way, the numbers show that the rebuild actually had a plurality. Since the voters were actually voting for three different outcomes, the additional "No/No" votes effectively drew votes away from the other two options and resulted in neither having a majority, but the rebuild got the most votes.

The only reason it looks like surface/transit "won" is because of how oddly structured the ballot was. If the viaduct debate were a presidential election, the rebuild would already be planning its inauguration speech and the tunnel supporters would be calling surface/transit supporters Naderites.