Larry Warfield has a unique window into Burlington politics. The husband of Town Clerk Amy Warfield, he’s been on hand and volunteering at most, if not all, elections going back years. He was curious to know more about the data, and with his background in statistics, he dug into some important questions. How, he wondered, is the rise of early voting changing results at the ballot box? And how should candidates adapt to this new voting behavior?
According to Warfield’s analysis of publicly available data, contested local races drive election turnout. But because of early voting, success no longer depends solely on Election Day turnout. That means candidates need to get their message out sooner so they don’t miss out on a growing section of voters who cast their ballot well in advance of Election Day.
In the April 2024 local election, for example, 2,352 voters, or 61 percent of all voters, cast their ballots early, by far the highest in any year since 2020. Of those, 571 voters had already voted two weeks before Election Day, meaning they missed many campaign mailers and candidate forums hosted by the Council on Aging and Indian Americans for Burlington.
“I love that IAB forum, they’ve got the best food going, but in terms of influencing the votes, easily a third of [early] votes were already cast.”
Of course, it’s not clear whether an early voter would have voted any differently if they had two more weeks of information and media exposure, but it’s certainly a call for candidates to move up their campaign calendar.
Candidates interested in reaching older voters should be particularly interested in Warfield’s call for an accelerated campaign cycle: Seniors vote, and they vote early. Voters over 60 were disproportionately represented in total turnout, and they were also among the most likely to vote early. A whopping 78 percent of voters aged 70 and older voted early in 2024, but so did voters in their 20s, 30s and 60s. Voters in their teens, 40s and 50s preferred day-of voting.
Seniors are disproportionately likely to vote early. Data analysis and graphic design by Larry Warfield.
Warfield’s analysis will be interesting to watch in future races. In 2025, Select Board members Mike Espejo and Nick Priest’s terms are both expiring, as are the terms of School Committee members Melissa Massardo and Christine Monaco and Planning Board members Ernie Covino and Bill Gaffney.
Burlington’s April 2025 local election may seem far away, but for candidates, the dates will come up quickly. Candidates can pull papers to run for office on January 1 through February 12; papers are due back by February 14. Early voting ballots will go out about a month after that, and some voters will fill out their ballots and return them within days.
“Looking at the data, certainly the advantage goes to the candidates who can quickly organize their campaigns, operate effectively, find somebody who knows Excel and can start to get some data from the clerk,” Warfield said. “Waiting until Election Day to get out the vote is too late.”