Council voting
Berkeley City Council meetings can be epic in duration and drama. Five hour meetings are not unusual owing to the ambitious agendas and the extensive public comment sessions.
In the end, council members must cast their votes on the matters before them. How do they use those votes? What do their voting patterns tell us about the (dis)alignment between individual members?
Contents
Individual Performance
Council members may vote Aye, No, Abstain, be recorded as Absent, or Recuse themselves from a particular matter.
Unanimous votes were excluded from this analysis.
How members voted (2019, to date)
This is a straight count of votes cast by members who were not absent.
| Member | Aye | No | Abstain | Recuse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arreguin | 104 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| Bartlett | 87 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Davila | 66 | 22 | 12 | 0 |
| Droste | 73 | 6 | 8 | 0 |
| Hahn | 98 | 10 | 2 | 0 |
| Harrison | 82 | 14 | 2 | 0 |
| Kesarwani | 96 | 8 | 5 | 0 |
| Robinson | 93 | 12 | 1 | 0 |
| Wengraf | 64 | 17 | 2 | 0 |
How members voted [percentages] (2019, through July 5)
This table shows how members cast their votes as a percentage of their overall voting record.
| Member | Aye | No | Abstain | Recuse |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arreguin | 94.55 % | 5.45 % | 0.00 % | 0.00 % |
| Bartlett | 94.57 % | 5.43 % | 0.00 % | 0.00 % |
| Davila | 66.00 % | 22.00 % | 12.00 % | 0.00 % |
| Droste | 83.91 % | 6.90 % | 9.20 % | 0.00 % |
| Hahn | 89.09 % | 9.09 % | 1.82 % | 0.00 % |
| Harrison | 83.67 % | 14.29 % | 2.04 % | 0.00 % |
| Kesarwani | 88.07 % | 7.34 % | 4.59 % | 0.00 % |
| Robinson | 87.74 % | 11.32 % | 0.94 % | 0.00 % |
| Wengraf | 77.11 % | 20.48 % | 2.41 % | 0.00 % |
Voting Correlation
Berkeley voters with limited time for lobbying may wish to concentrate their efforts with the members who are most likely to support their interests.
These charts depict the correlation between members across all votes in a calendar year. These are created as follows:
- A vote is recorded for each member;
- Each "aye" is scored as "1"
- Each "no" is scored as "-1"
- Abstentions are scored as "0"
- Unanimous votes are ignored since these have no explanatory power with regard to intra-council dynamics
Higher numbers (greener cells) indicate that the two members are more closely aligned; negative numbers (more red) signal opposing views.
2019 (through July 5)
2018
Caveat: Robinson and Kesarwani were only in office for one meeting and so their data should be ignored.
