2023 primary election notebook: A closer look at results in Bloomington’s city council district races

The winners of the four contested Bloomington city council district races on Tuesday were Isabel Piedmont-Smith (District 1); Kate Rosenbarger (District 2); Hopi Stosberg (District 3); and Shruti Rana (District 4).

That’s an even split between two incumbents and two newcomers. The incumbents are Piedmont-Smith and Rosenbarger. The newcomers are Stosberg and Rana.

They’ll be the Democratic Party’s nominees in the Nov. 7 city elections.

Those basic results have been known since election night. In the meantime, The B Square has discerned a few noteworthy facts about the election numbers.

Just 39 votes separated District 2 winner Kate Rosenbarger from the other incumbent in the race, Sue Sgambelluri. The 39-vote margin was the closest of any city council race. But that’s not as small a number as it sounds—when the relatively small number of total votes is considered.

Rosenbarger’s margin works out to be about 3 percentage points, which is well over the 1-percent threshold that is used to determine if a candidate must pay the cost of a recount. No recount is in the works. Rosenbarger prevailed in District 1, receiving 679 votes (51.48 percent) compared to Sgambelluri’s 640 (48.52 percent).

In the other three contested city council district races, the winner received around 58 percent of the vote.

Piedmont-Smith, who won the District 1 race over challenger Joe Lee with 708 votes (58.18 percent) compared to 509 votes (41.82 percent) for Lee.

Stosberg won the District 3 race with 584 votes (57.31 percent) compared to 277 votes (27.18 percent) for incumbent Ron Smith, and 158 votes (15.51 percent) for Conner Wright. Getting more than 50 percent in a three-way race is generally considered a significant accomplishment.

Rana won the District 5 nomination over another newcomer, Jenny Stevens, with 1,291 votes (58.13 percent) compared to 930 votes (41.87 percent) for Stevens.

District 5 had the highest turnout of any district—measured by raw numbers and by percentage of registered voters.

So even though Stevens was well behind Rana in District 5, the 930 votes she received was more than the winner received in all the other district races—by a lot. Stevens received 31 percent more votes than Piedmont-Smith, 37 percent more votes than Rosenbarger, and 60 percent more votes than Stosberg. Of course, District 5 votes don’t count for races in other districts.

On election night, the first preliminary results that were released by the Monroe County clerk’s office were for mailed absentee ballots and walk-in early voting. So that meant the first set of results showed Lee as the winner over Piedmont-Smith, and Sgambelluri as the winner over Rosenbarger.

Lee’s early vote total (including mailed-in absentee ballots) was 262 compared to 247 for Piedmont-Smith. Sgambelluri’s early vote total (including mailed-in absentee ballots) was 313 compared to Rosenbarger’s 260. Piedmont-Smith and Rosenbarger made up the deficit with election day votes.

Rana’s win in District 5 was uniform across every precinct.

Stosberg came close to sweeping every precinct in District 3. But Wright won the lightly voted Bloomington 23 with 14 votes, compared to 3 for Stosberg and 4 for Smith.

In losing District 2, Sgambelluri still won Bloomington 13 and Bloomington 17, the two northernmost precincts in the district, which is her home neighborhood.

In losing District 1, Lee still won Perry 8, his home neighborhood, as well as  Van Buren 2.

Results Tables