Primary election notebook: Geographic breakdown of Monroe County commissioner’s race

If Tuesday's  Democratic Party’s primary race for District 1 Monroe County commissioner had been confined just to the voters of Bloomington city council District 6, David Henry would have been the clear winner, with 57.25% of the vote.

But District 6 is made up of precincts covering Indiana University campus and nearby neighborhoods, so it is densely populated with students. Turnout there is notoriously low. On Tuesday, just 131 people in Bloomington city council District 6 voted in the county commissioner race.  An average of ten times as many voters cast a ballot in the other five city council districts.

That meant even though Henry got 75 of the 131 votes, that plurality was nowhere near enough to make up for deficits in other precincts. In all, Henry won 12 out of the county’s 83 precincts, which left him almost 20 percentage points shy of Deckard’s total:  5,006 (40.3%) to 7,409 (59.7%). 

The picture was just a smidgen brighter for Henry inside the city of Bloomington, where Deckard had 58.2% of the vote. That meant Deckard’s showing outside the city of Bloomington was better than his  overall performance. Outside Bloomington Deckard got 61.5% of the vote. 

That did not mean Henry was shut out in the precinct battle outside Bloomington. One precinct won by Deckard was way outside of the city of Bloomington: Benton Township Precinct 2, in the northwest part of the county. The fact that Henry won the precinct is not visible on the map, because the margin was razor thin: 101 to 99. On the map, differences that small are rendered as white.

Bloomington breakdown: inside versus outside