School Levy Returns and their Discontents: Age Demographics, Ferndale Levy Loss, Correlating the Anti-tax votes.

Special Election 2020 Results for Whatcom County can be found here.

All data is from 02/12/2020 matchback and returns. More votes will be counted until certification. Check your ballot status at  voteWA.gov to make sure your ballot was tabulated.

All Ballot Types By Decade:

    Decade     N

 1:      1   532

 2:      2  3764

 3:      3  5956

 4:      4  7262

 5:      5  8662

 6:      6 12860 # 60s

 7:      7 11206 # 70s

 8:      8  3956

 9:      9   790

10:     10    15

Click on charts to enlarge: 

For all ballot statuses received as of 02/12/2020

For all ballot statuses received as of 02/12/2020

From a 2017 property database, I will *guesstimate* Ferndale school district aggregate appraised values at over $4B today. This would include cities of Ferndale, Custer, Lummi Island. Ferndale school district includes part of Cherry Point refineries.

# 2017 Property Database. Values in Millions of dollars:
Prop[,.(propM=round(fsum(as.numeric(appraised_val_total))/(10^6),1)),keyby="situs_city"][1:19][order(-propM)]
       situs_city   propM
 1:    BELLINGHAM 16360.6
 2:        BLAINE  3546.8
 3:      FERNDALE  3191.2
 4:        LYNDEN  2364.3
 5:       EVERSON   706.9
 6: POINT ROBERTS   586.7
 7:        DEMING   363.6
 8: SEDRO WOOLLEY   328.6
 9:        CUSTER   308.3
10:         SUMAS   297.4
11:  LUMMI ISLAND   261.6
12:   MAPLE FALLS   172.9
13:       GLACIER   163.8
14:      NOOKSACK   102.1
15:          ACME    53.7
16:  ELIZA ISLAND    22.9
17:   MOUNT BAKER    15.3
18:                   5.3
19:    Bellingham     0.6
...

The Special February 2020 Ferndale Yes/No Levy votes correlates positively with No976/Yes976 from GE2019. Precincts 134 and 135 are partial for the Ferndale School Districts. 'Registered' and 'Accepted' columns reflect the splits. All vote counts reflect the entire Precinct (e.g the split precinct totals are duplicated):

This Google Earth screen snip shows the 134 and 135 Precinct splits between Ferndale School District (blue) and Bellingham School District (brown). Click to enlarge:

# Correlations

When the split precincts (134, 135) are removed, No on School Levy/Yes on 976 (GE 2019) and Yes on School Levy/No on 976 (GE 2019)  have strong (positive) correlation coefficients:

f5[!duplicated(Precinct),cor(No,Yes976)]

[1] 0.8181656

f5[!duplicated(Precinct),cor(Yes,No976)]

[1] 0.5400791

f5[!duplicated(Precinct) & !Precinct %in% c(134,135),][,cor(No,Yes976)]

[1] 0.9007967

f5[!duplicated(Precinct) &!Precinct %in% c(134,135),][,cor(Yes,No976)]

[1] 0.7524982

# Sums

f5[!duplicated(Precinct),.(NoLevy=fsum(No),Yes976=fsum(Yes976))]

   NoLevy Yes976

1:   4568   7328

f5[!duplicated(Precinct),.(YesLevy=fsum(Yes),No976=fsum(No976))]

   YesLevy No976

1:    3491  5777

Click on Charts to enlarge. Precicnts 134 and 135 are partial (e.g. split) for the Ferndale School District: 

 Blue: Yes on School Levy (SE 2020) and  Red: No on 972 (GE 2019):

Blue: No on School Levy (SE 2020)  and  Red: Yes on 972 (GE 2019):

Updated: Ferndale School District Precinct results (minus 'split' precincts 134, 135, 201) from 02/14/2020 data. The violet red is "No" on SE 2020 school levy.  The light blue is "Yes" on SE 2020 school levy.  i976  (blue,red) votes are from GE 2019. Click to enlarge.