Janet Zink has a great catch at sptimes.com, about how the early voting turnout is up 32 percent for the Tampa runoff election vs. the same period for the primary vote. The consensus among the experts she interviewed was that this means trouble for Joe Redner in his attempt to unseat Councilwoman Gwen Miller.

Interesting.

Let's analyze further.

CPW (Conventional Political Wisdom) would tell us that a higher turnout benefits the mass media candidate (Joe) over the grassroots candidate (Gwen). Of course, that CPW goes out the window if Gwen is turning out so many of her voters that it is going to hurt Joe's chances. But in her stronghold, East Tampa, the percentage of people voting (out of the whole city) is flat. So Gwen is not turning out lots more people in East Tampa.

The largest chunk of voters remains in a Joe stronghold — South Tampa. The vote there is slightly off for the runoff (46 percent of the total city vs. 51 percent of the total in the primary). Even so, I have to give South Tampa to Joe, who carried these precincts the first time around. The lower vote could be the dropoff for Julie Jenkins voters, who put the South Tampa resident into third place in the primary but have little motivation to return to the polls for the runoff.

So, if voting is slightly down in South Tampa, where is it up? New Tampa (where the Joseph Caetano-Frank Margarella runoff is being waged) and West Tampa, a traditionally Democratic bastion with conservative social values. These are NOT Redner voters, so Gwen can count on the increase here benefitting her.

So, to sum up: South Tampa remains advantage Redner; West Tampa is the only advance that seems solidly in the Gwen column. Who knows which of those two would win in New Tampa, where the vote is up, but my guess would be that Joe's pro-business libertarianism plays better in the GOP bedroom community than Gwen's classic liberal stances.

Not sure I buy assertions that these patterns spell trouble for Joe. Fact is, all of us "experts" are guessing at this point.

This article appears in Mar 21-27, 2007.