The Student Assembly presidential election produced a completely unexpected result: write-in candidate Tim Andreadis '07 beat Dave Zubricki '07, who was initially favored to win the race. Although he decided to run after the EPAC deadline, and therefore had the disadvantage of campaigning as a write-in, running outside the system may have actually helped Andreadis. Further, popular discontent with the Student Assembly, as well as the results of The Dartmouth poll, may have pushed students to vote for a "dark-horse" candidate.
Two actions by The Dartmouth might have helped Andreadis. First, The Dartmouth did not include write-in candidates when it polled the student body. Anyone favoring Andreadis had to specifically state that in the poll; only about a dozen students did so. As a result, the poll showed Zubricki leading very closely against Adam Patinkin '07. Seeing these results, some lukewarm Zubricki supporters and others who favored Patinkin may have switched their first vote to Patinkin. As a result, Patinkin hurt the Zubricki vote, helping Andreadis.
Second, The Dartmouth Editorial Board endorsed Zubricki for president and Loeb for vice president in its election issue ("A Call to Overhaul Student Assembly," April 25). Andreadis might have won the "anti-D" vote by creating a perception of mass discontent with The Dartmouth in his recent op-ed, "Throwing a Hat in the Ring" (April 24).
In the vice presidential election, Jacqueline Loeb '08 benefited from being the only '08 candidate for the vice presidential position. Ruslan Tovbulatov '09, while splitting the freshman vote with Zak Moore '09 and Josh Jacobson '09, was still toe-to-toe with Santi Vallinas '07 until the final round, sometimes gaining less votes than Vallinas, but always maintaining a lead. The freshman vote, which The Dartmouth poll predicted as the largest demographic turnout in the election, was split three ways. This suggests that Loeb benefited by campaigning in her sophomore year.
The Dartmouth poll predicted a much larger margin of victory for Loeb than was realized in the election. This might have been due to a negative effect of The Dartmouth poll, or a last-minute effort by Tovbulatov, Loeb's main opponent.
The real extent of the effect that The Dartmouth poll and Assembly apathy played in the Student Assembly election is uncertain.
The instant runoff voting method did not affect the results of either the presidential or the vice presidential elections. The candidates that received the most votes in the first round (ranked first by voters) maintained the lead and ended up as the winning candidates by the last, eleventh, round.
Instant runoff voting could have swung the election towards Zubricki, if the electoral system had forced voters to rank all candidates. Because voters could choose to rank only one or two candidates, some Andreadis supporters might have neglected to rank Zubricki at all, and vice-versa. By the ninth round, the amount of exhaust votes was sufficient that, had those voters ranked Zubricki (if they did not initially), he would have had enough votes to beat Andreadis in the final, eleventh round.
