The path to winning an election looks like it is paved with campaign signs, handshakes, passionate speeches and candidates’ smiles. But the people who know how to get candidates elected will tell you that winning translates into identifying the voters most likely to cast a vote for a candidate and then devising a plan to get those people to the polls.
It’s that simple — and it’s also enormously complicated, and strategists in Lynn as well as Peabody, Revere and Salem are trying to find ways to win in September and November.
Let’s take a look at Lynn’s voter registration landscape. Newly-released U.S. Census information is helpful in this effort. No one who lives in Lynn is surprised to learn white Americans as a local population segment declined in the city between 2010 and 2020, while the Latino population increased. Whites represent 34 percent of Lynn’s 101,000 population and Hispanics represent 44 percent.
City election department registration numbers list 55,428 registered voters, including 3,180 listed as “inactive” in terms of voter participation. Compare that registration total to 54,000 Lynn voters registered to cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election and 52,000 registered to vote in the September 2019 preliminary election.
Ten years ago, the city had 46,027 registered voters. Since then, that number has increased along with the city’s population.
Ward 1 has traditionally been a vote-gathering mecca for Lynn candidates. In 2011, the city’s other six wards didn’t come close to matching Ward 1’s 8,923 registered voters. Today, Ward 1 dominates the 2021 registration count with 9,832 voters. Ward 7 is also a historically-reliable voter treasure trove with 8,564 registered voters. But Ward 3 is giving Ward 7 a run for its money with 8,513 voters.
Ward 2’s Precinct 1, spanning neighborhoods between Western Avenue and Verona Street, continues to dominate the ward in terms of voter registration with 2,557 voters — just as it did in 2011, when 2/1 tallied 2,336 voters.
Voting totals in those wards translate into homeowners and taxpayers who are primed to go to the polls. But what about the city’s other wards, where single-family home neighborhoods border multi-family neighborhoods, like Wards 5 and 6?
Ward 5 Precinct 1 between Western Avenue and Boston Street with a portion of Pine Hill and Ward 5 Precinct 3, with neighborhoods along Franklin Street, each saw more than 40 percent registration increases over 10 years.
Ward 6 Precinct 3 was the ward’s third-smallest precinct in 2011 in terms of registered voters. Today, it is the largest precinct in the ward with 1,734 voters who live south of the Common and on side streets off Summer Street.
Wards 5 and 6 saw hard-fought ward council campaigns during the last two municipal elections. Not so this year. Conversely, Wards 2, 3 and 4 are campaign battlegrounds in 2021. There are no ward council races in 1 and 7.
Campaign strategists are going to analyze shifts in voter registration and ask, “Where are the reliable voters who can be counted on to go to the polls?”
With fewer than 3 percent of its registered voters counted as inactive, Ward 1 is a goldmine of reliable voters. Wards 4, 5 and 6 — with more than 5 percent of total registrations classified as inactive — aren’t as reliable.
Lynn hit historic demographic benchmarks twice this year by topping the 100,000-resident mark and with the Census confirming the largest demographic group is Spanish speakers.
The strategists who propel candidates to victory in Lynn, as well as Revere, Peabody and Salem on Sept. 14 and in the November final elections will analyze voter registration shifts and factor in changing demographics to target residents with campaign messages and formulate a strategy for getting voters to the polls.
