In mid-September, three mayoral candidates – Omar Fateh, Rev. DeWayne Davis and Jazz Hampton – formed an alliance in the mayoral election in what they called the “Slate for Change.” They urged voters to rank all three candidates in hopes of unseating the incumbent, Mayor Jacob Frey.
But city election data from the Nov. 4 mayoral race show that their strategy fell short. The city published the detailed voter records, which show the ranking combination of every single ballot cast in the mayoral election and the precinct where the ballot was cast. Sahan Journal analyzed the data to find out the effectiveness of the “Slate of Change” campaign.
Fateh, Davis and Hampton presented themselves to Minneapolis voters as more progressive alternatives to Frey, criticizing him on issues like policing reform and the response to homelessness. Though Fateh was seen as the furthest to the left on the political spectrum from Frey, with Hampton and Davis somewhere in between the two, the three banded together to take down the two-term mayor.
About 27% of all voters ranked all three “Slate for Change” candidates, according to election data from the city. The campaign drew its strongest support in south-central Minneapolis, where more than 40% of voters in Wards 9 and 10 ranked the full slate. Those wards include the Powderhorn, Longfellow, Lowry Hill and Whittier neighborhoods, among others.
In Ward 6, which includes the Cedar Riverside and Seward neighborhoods, more than 60% of the ballots listed some or all of the slate candidates and no one else.
Despite the slate’s coordinated effort, Frey led the first round with 41.7% of the votes, followed by Fateh with 31.6%. Because no candidates secured the majority in the first round, the race advanced into a second round of ranked-choice tabulation. In this round, the second-choice votes for those who did not rank Frey or Fateh as their first choice were redistributed to the remaining candidates.
For Fateh to win, he needed to get enough second-choice votes from voters who initially backed other challengers.
But the strategy did not deliver. He was not the most popular second-choice candidate among voters who favored either Davis or Hampton. More voters who chose Davis first ranked Hampton second instead of Fateh. More voters who chose Hampton first listed Frey as their second choice.
The popularity of Frey as the second choice among voters who ranked Davis and Hampton first further decreased Fateh’s chance of winning. About 12% of voters who ranked Davis first ranked Frey second, whereas 27% of Hampton voters chose Frey as their second choice. This limited the transfer of votes that Fateh needed to overtake Frey.
Although Fateh gained more than 6,000 votes in the second round of tabulation, the boost was not enough to close the gap. In the final tally, Frey won the election by obtaining 50.03% of the second-round votes while Fateh secured 44.37% of them.
Staff reporter Mohamed Ibrahim contributed to this report.
