Methodology

Percentage of the vote

For City Council races, CincyPolitics calculates a candidate's vote share as a percentage of ballots cast, not of votes cast. This differs from how results are typically reported by the Board of Elections and most news organizations.

The denominator matters.

Under Cincinnati's at-large 9X system, each voter may cast up to nine votes for council candidates, who all compete in the same field race. Dividing by votes cast — which can total as many as nine times the number of voters — exaggerates the apparent crowding of the race and understates the breadth of support that leading candidates actually received. It's more useful to know which candidates earned a majority of citywide ballots than to see dozens bunched in single digits.

Many voters also make strategic choices about how many votes to use. When a party fields a short slate, partisans often avoid filling their remaining slots to avoid diluting their preferred candidates' totals. "Bullet voting" — casting a single vote for one favorite — is a time-honored strategy in multi-seat races. These shortened ballots are legitimate expressions of voter intent. Using total votes cast as the denominator gives disproportionate weight to voters who used all nine.

Measuring by ballots cast yields a truer picture of voter support and makes results more comparable across elections, including single-seat races such as mayor.

Maps

Precinct maps show each candidate's share of ballots cast in that precinct, using the same denominator as the results tables. Color intensity is calculated using Jenks natural breaks, an algorithm that identifies natural clusters in the data rather than imposing equal intervals. This means the color scale reflects where support actually concentrates — it will look different from candidate to candidate and race to race.

The map shows vote share, not raw totals. A precinct with 800 voters and 60% support looks the same as one with 100 voters and 60% support. For turnout context, see the precinct data table linked on each map page.

Precinct boundaries reflect the Hamilton County Board of Elections precinct plan for each election year. The number of precincts and their boundaries can change from one election to another, although Cincinnati's ward boundaries have remained largely constant since 1925. Source data is the official canvass.

9x9

The 9×9 is a grid showing how often each pair of Cincinnati City Council members voted the same way. Each cell shows an affinity score — the percentage of shared roll-call votes on which both members cast identical votes.

Only votes where both members were present and cast a countable vote are included. Absent and excused votes are excluded from both the numerator and denominator, so a member's absences don't artificially inflate or deflate their agreement with colleagues.

By default, the grid shows only contested votes — roll calls on which at least one member voted no. These may include procedural votes: An ordinance may have a motion to hold, a motion to suspend the rules, a vote on final passage, and a final vote to ratify an emergency clause. All are counted equally. Unanimous votes are excluded because they reveal nothing about the ideological or political differences between members. You can toggle to all votes using the button above the grid.

Diagonal cells, which would show a member's agreement with himself or herself, are suppressed.

The grid is symmetric: the agreement score between any two members is the same regardless of which direction you read it.