Last month I documented A Few San Francisco Election Flyer Statistics. Here is an update of what I've received since and final totals.

Flyers after 2012-10-21

After 2012-10-21 I received the following flyers for specific propositions and candidates:

• 1 Yes on 33
• 1 Yes on 39
• 1 Yes on A
• 1 Yes on B
• 2 Yes on C
• 3 Yes on E
• 1 Chris Jackson for Community College Board
• 5 London Breed
• 1 doublesided doorhanger with London Breed on one side and Thea Selby on the other (both for district 5 supervisor). I think I will count this as half a flyer for each.
• 1 Julian Davis for district 5 supervisor
• 4 John Rizzo for district 5 supervisor

And the following flyers from committees, groups, coalitions advocating for (y) or against (n) propositions and candidates:

• 2 Small Business Action Committee - advocating: 30n, 32y, 40y
• 1 Sierra Club Voter Guide - advocating: 31n, 32n, 37y, 39y, Cy, Mark Leno, Phil Ting, Tom Ammiano, John Rizzo
• 1 Election Digest / Coalition For Literacy Newsletter - advocating:30y, 32n, 33y, 37n, 38n, 39y, Obama, Feinstein, Klivans

Flyer Totals

With the above flyers included, here are the updated flyer totals for various issues and candidates, with the winners highlighted in green and rejected propositions in red. Results are from SFDOE Results and California General Election | California Secretary of State.

Committees, Groups, Coalitions

A number of flyers were from various groups that advocated for (or against) particular propositions and/or candidates. It made the most sense to list those flyers separately by group. In alphabetical order:

• 2 Budget Watchdogs (re: 30-37, 39)
• 1 Election Digest / Coalition For Literacy Newsletter - advocating: 30y, 33y, 39y, Obama, Feinstein, Klivans
• 1 San Francisco Firefighters (re: 30, 32, A-E, F, supervisors, state senate/assembly)
• 1 Sierra Club Voter Guide (37y, 39y, Cy, Mark Leno, Phil Ting, Tom Ammiano, John Rizzo)
• 4 Small Business Action Committee (32y, 40y). One flyer had the URL "readityourself.org" which is apparently about Packard Humanities Institute and doesn't mention Small Business Action Committee at all.

California Propositions Flyers

Flyers primarily about specific California (CA) state propositions:

• 1 Yes on 33
• 1 Yes on 39

Most California propositions failed. 5 out of 11 passed. It's not clear whether their outcomes had any relation to flyers distributed.

San Francisco Propositions Flyers

Flyers primarily about specific SF city propositions:

• 1 A
• 4 B
• 3 C
• 4 E

All San Francisco propositions passed except for F (draining the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and identifying replacement water and power sources) for which there were no flyers. However, it's not clear that the flyers had anything to do with the results - the one that failed was seemingly obviously not in the best interest of any San Francisco resident.

SF School Boards

Flyers for school and community board positions:

• 2 Matt Haney for school board
• 1 Chris Jackson for Community College Board
• 2 Hanna Leung for Community College Board (No URL)

SF District 5 Supervisor Flyers

Sorted by family-name:

• 11.5* London Breed
• 3 Julian Davis
• 5 Christina Olague
• 5 John Rizzo
• 2.5* Thea Selby

*I received a doublesided doorhanger with London Breed on one side and Thea Selby on the other, and thus decided to count it as half a flyer for each.

If we look at the number of votes each candidate received, there is a rough ordered correlation with fliers sent. The top 5 vote receiving candidates were the 5 candidates that sent out flyers, and only in the case of incumbent Christina Olague vs. John Rizzo did a candidate who sent fewer flyers receive more votes - perhaps due to an incumbent advantage factor.

Sorted by votes received:

candidate	votes	flyers	v/f
LONDON BREED	8821	11.5	767
CHRISTINA OLAGUE (I)	6203	5	1241
JOHN RIZZO	5130	5	1026
JULIAN DAVIS	4786	3	1595
THEA SELBY	4287	2.5	1715

London Breed sent out more than twice as many flyers as next most spammy candidate, and she won the election. It's not clear how much (if at all) the number of flyers helped her win, or if the number of flyers merely reflected some other factor (e.g. amount of campaign funding raised) that helped get more votes.

Now to recycle all those flyers. I might first see if it is possible to arrange all the flyers on the floor and take a photo of all of them. Will post a follow-up if that works out.

I expect there are more interesting ways to present some of this data. If you'd like to do anything with these statistics, please help yourself as I'm licensing this entire blog post and the research contained therein with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.

Update 2012-11-16: While recycling/shredding some old junk mail I found a couple more old flyers (one for London Breed and one for Christina Olague) and have added them to the totals accordingly.