What I was going for in that post was:

1. 2025 voters in precincts on JHawk's live reported results / 2023 official voters in those same precincts

2. 2023 unofficial prelim voters for all precincts / 2023 official voters for all precincts

Yes - in this post I was using prelim unofficial in both cases. I think I had the prelim unofficial data saved locally rather than accessing the city website. bsky.app/profile/awca...

My ultimate theory is that we saw more SC-first voters in 2025 than in previous elections, but the large number of candidates on the ballot compels SC-first to rank their CC choices alphabetically, and vice versa.

Mail-in voting may also be a factor: you might feel compelled to return all ballots.

Comparing that to the 2023 election's school committee is tough, because there were so many fewer candidates.

Bejnood to Harding (2nd) 17%
Pierre to Rojas Villarreal 18%
Travers to D. Weinstein (5th) 11%

Note: Bejnood to Harding did appear in 2025 non-consecutively, and that was only 5%.

Note also this effect was also present in the School Committee votes.

Gause to Goetz 39%
Bejnood to Bowers 35%
Coburn to de Paula Santos 29%
Battle to Bowers 19%
Bowers to de Paula Santos 49%
Lee to Roja Villarreal 14%
Goetz to Harding 11% (elected) + Havstad 18%
Hunter to Jaikumar (3rd) 14%

Plus, we only saw the transfers from the bottom 8 candidates, who got 16% of the #1 votes.

Extrapolating this to other candidates whose votes didn't transfer suggests ~3000 voters who ranked CC candidates alphabetically. That may be excessive - voters might choose #1 intentionally, then #2 alpha.

Looking at ideologically similar but differently alphabetized candidates, there are ~500 more voters who voted the bottom 8 candidates #1 and subsequents alphabetically, than the rates from the previous election.

That's more than the turnout difference between the School Committee and City Council!

Note that in 2025, there was only 1 transfer between candidates that were endorsed by the same group (Wilson to Zusy, CCC).

In 2023, all but the first transfer were between candidates with shared endorsements.

Winters to Zusy was higher in 2025 despite sharing CCC endorsements in 2023.

Compare to the notably lower numbers of alphabetical transfers in the 2023 election:

Hsu to Klein (3rd) 9%
Pierre to Simmons 24%
Pasquarello to Pickett (2nd) 12%
Wang to Wilson (4th) 7%
Winters to Zusy (2nd) 13%
Muchnik to Nolan 15%
Walker to Wilson 17%
Brown to Hanratty 16%

The bottom 4 CC candidates all transferred more votes to the next alphabetical candidate than any other candidate:

Battle to Bisio 51%
Winters to Zusy 33%
Rivkin to Sherin 21%
Sherin to Simmons 31%
Melanson to Nolan (3rd) 18%
Hsu to Nolan 22%
Bisio to Bullister (2nd) 22%
Wilson to Zusy (2nd) 15%

The full round-by-round breakdown is on the City website now:

www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/...

Hanratty at 4.5% is not even halfway to quota, but last year Pickett won with 4.1% of the #1 votes. Her transfer votes made up 59% of her total votes, the largest amount of anyone elected in 80 years.

If elected, either Hanratty or Bullister would have the 2nd-largest amount in the last 70 years.

The antiquated transfer method for over quota / eliminated votes used in Cambridge for multi-seat ranked choice means results aren't final until every vote is counted. See last year's School Committee race.

The city is expected to adopt fractional transfers with tonight's passage of the new charter

With #1 votes counted, the Cambridge City Council election will come down to transfers. It may also take until after auxiliary and late mail-in ballots are counted. Here are my guesses on the remaining candidates' odds:

Simmons 95%
Zusy 95%
Flaherty 85%
Nolan 75%
Hanratty 49%
Bullister 1%

#CambMA School Committee: Hudson and Harding will return. Incumbent Hunter will be defeated. In contention for the remaining 4 seats:

de Paula Santos
Dube
Schraa Huh
Jaikumar
Hirschi
Weinstein (I)
Rojas Villareal (I)

Voters largely aligned against how the current SC handled superintendent search

Quota for SC is 16.66% so none at quota

Where will Ayesha Wilson's votes transfer?

In 2023, her voters' second choices were:
37% McGovern, Siddiqui, Al-Zubi, Azeem, JSW
15% Simmons
6% Pierre
6% Nolan
5% Walker
5% Toner
4% nobody
3% Zusy
2% Pickett
1% Hanratty

I'd guess roughly 40% of her votes (4.4%) transfer to Simmons (6.5% -> 8.3%).

Results as of 10:36pm

By slate:

ABC 58% for 9 -> 59% for 8
CBS 63% for 12 -> 74% for 12 (68% when removing Zusy, not endorsed in 2023)
CCC 37% for 11 -> 21% for 6 (28% when adding Nolan, Winters who were endorsed in 2023)
CResA 45% for 8 -> 37% for 5 (41% when adding Wilson, endorsed in 2023)

As of 10:20pm (added 2-2 and 4-3), unofficial live reported turnout in 2025 is 86% of official 2023

But end of election night turnout of 2023 was 91% of official 2023 - about 9% of ballots were counted after election night

So definitely down but probably not that much