The June 7 primary election gave us political junkies a much-needed look at temperature of Marin County's electorate. In lieu of polls, it's easy to imagine the loudest voices are also the most politically powerful, but that doesn't seem to be the case this year. Instead, geography was destiny, with incumbents swinging to large victories in incorporated areas and challengers finding difficulty breaking out of their unincorporated enclaves. In West Marin, it was a classic case of North vs. South.

These maps were created using the First Count data released by the elections office on June 10. Full data counts won't be available until next week. A brief update will outline what changed once these data are released.

District 2: Katie Rice, Kevin Haroff, Frank Egger

This election pitted incumbent Katie Rice against Larkspur councilmember Kevin Haroff and former Fairfax councilmember (now Ross Valley Sanitary District board member) Frank Egger. Haroff was endorsed by the Citizen Marin coalition and came out early against the Larkspur Station Area Plan. Egger orchestrated rezoning large chunks of downtown Fairfax to include more parking a few years ago and has called for more parking around Larkspur Landing.

First, Rice won every precinct and won the district with a whopping 57 percent. Nowhere did she earn fewer votes than her challengers. However, these two split the Citizen Marin vote, and there are areas where Rice won less than the combined totals of her challengers.

Rice was strongest in Gerstle Park, downtown San Rafael, and Larkspur, but would have likely lost Ross, Greenbrae, and northern Fairfax had she only faced one challenger. Egger was strongest in Fairfax, as he often is, but failed to make a good showing elsewhere. Haroff showed strongest in Ross and Greenbrae but did not do so well in his home city.

District 3: Kate Sears and Susan Kirsch

Incumbent Kate Sears beat back a vigorous challenge from Citizen Marin co-founder Susan Kirsch who arguably started her campaign almost two years ago.

Strawberry vigorously pushed back against a then-years-old Priority Development Area, arguing it was a way for Sears to ram through new housing. Though that anger and resentment are largely in the past, its marks remain on this electoral stage, with Kirsch handily winning the Strawberry Peninsula and narrowly earning the support of nearby unincorporated neighborhoods on the Tiburon Peninsula.

Tam Valley/Homestead Valley/Almonte, home to Citizen Marin ally Sustainable TamAlmonte and numerous protests over Muir Woods tourists, however, went to Sears, as did all the incorporated towns in the district. Sears’ strongest support came from Marin City, possibly indicating that attempts to make inroads there by Kirsch and Community Venture Partners’ Bob Silvestri have not been terribly successful electorally. Sausalito, home to Citizen Marin allies and councilwomen Linda Pfeifer and Jill Hoffman, also went strongly for Sears.

District 4: The West Marin melee

The chaotic 8-way race to replace Steven Kinsey resulted in a runoff between first-place Dennis Rodoni and second-place Dominic Grossi. No doubt the various endorsing bodies will be looking hard at the positions of both as progressive Wendi Kallins (frequently misspelled Wendy) and Citizen Marinite Al Dugan both failed to make the top two.

Rodoni, Grossi, and Kallins, along with 8th-place finisher Mari Tamburo, each claimed victory in at least one precinct. Rodoni’s support was concentrated in the urban areas of District 4, such as Larkspur and Novato; Grossi won the rural ranchlands of West Marin, as is befitting a rancher; and Kallins won her home of Forest Knolls, Olema, and San Geronimo. Dugan’s support, such as it was, came from East Marin, implying his platform of traffic and pension reform just don’t resonate out West.

EDIT: [A typo in my map reversed Rodoni and Grossi, which gives us an interesting chance at counterfactuals. Here's my alternative, corrected analysis:]

Rodoni, Grossi, and Kallins, along with 8th-place finisher Mari Tamburo, each claimed victory in at elast one precinct. Rodoni's support was concentrated in the township and urban areas of southern West and East Marin, including his home of Olema. Grossi won his home city of Novato and the more agriculturally-focused areas of northern West Marin, with just a few pockets of support in Southern Marin. In this first-round of results - we won't have the final vote tally until next week - Kallins won the central areas of West Marin in the San Geronimo Valley. Tam Valley was fairly evenly split.

Dugan support was strongly focused in East Marin, though he came in a distant fourth place. His support, such as it was, indicates his platform of traffic and pension reform just didn't resonate out West.

Intriguingly, Kallins seemed to be most in competition with Grossi, not Dugan, with a negative correlation between Grossi and Kallins vote shares. Dugan seems to have been a candidate on his own, with no clear negative correlation between his vote share and anyone else’s. He shares this in common with the other also-rans and Rodoni. This likely means that Grossi and Kallins split support. If Kallins supporters swing over to Grossi, he would be a formidible foe, able to command support of most of the incorporated areas of his district as well as the more populous pieces of West Marin. Rodoni would need to pick up not just Dugan supporters but many of the other also-rans to match. We will find out more as the Grossi and Rodoni campaigns gear up for the runoff in November.

If a pattern can be drawn, it is that Marinites reward competence and presence in their supervisors. District 4 residents rewarded supervisors with West Marin sensibilities. In Districts 2 and 3, their efforts or not, Kate Sears and Katie Rice have both been at the forefront of efforts to fix their districts' traffic. Yet this also cuts the other way: Strawberry and Greenbrae feel sidelined by their respective supervisors. Building trust will be difficult in these communities, but will be important: the superior organizing power of anger and aggrievement can make governing difficult even for an electorally safe politician.

Author's note: I am digitizing a huge amount of electoral data going back to 2013 for all races. If there is a race you would like to see mapped, let me know in the comments.

Author's other note: Unfortunately, Marin’s elections office does not keep shapefiles of electoral precincts, only lists of which residential properties belong to which precinct. This makes for unpleasant-looking maps, with holes and gaps where roads or uninhabited parcels are. But, short of redrawing hundreds of electoral precincts, it’s the best we have.