Waltham Times readers weigh in with their election priorities

We at the Waltham Times have been working diligently to bring you election coverage that will answer your questions and help you find the information you need to cast your votes on Nov. 4 — or during early voting, which will run from Oct. 25–28.

Earlier this month, we put out a survey asking readers about the issues that are most important to them and what factors are going to affect their votes.

Between Oct. 9 and Oct. 16, we received a total of 335 responses coming from all nine wards. That’s only about 0.5% of Waltham’s population, so there are many voices we aren’t hearing from. 

We’ll return with additional analysis of the survey data, but here are some initial insights.

Waltham’s voter turnout

City Council candidates have previously expressed concern that we might see low voter turnout this year. Waltham tends to see significantly lower turnout in municipal election years than in years with state and federal elections, especially for municipal elections without a mayoral race.

Our survey sample may therefore overrepresent Waltham residents who plan to vote in municipal elections, given that the overwhelming majority said they planned to vote this year.

In total, around 79% of respondents said they were as likely to go to the polls this year as in other election years. Only about 8% said they were less likely to do so.

Just under half of respondents told us they already knew who they were voting for in City Council. Only about 1% told us they were not planning to vote this year.

Although only around 40% of respondents knew who they were voting for for School Committee — and many more said they didn’t know who was running — most still said they would cast a vote, with only around 4% saying they did not plan to vote.

We asked readers to name up to three priorities that were going to affect their vote in the upcoming election out of a list we provided, and then we tallied up the number of times each topic came up. We found that readers were most concerned about issues of land use and housing, with a near-tie for third between public schools, traffic management, government transparency and accessibility, and Waltham’s response to federal and state issues.

If you have other questions about the elections, or thoughts on the data we’ve collected, we encourage you to write in to let us know!

Cyd Abnet, Laura Glazer, June Kinoshita and Isabella Lapriore helped design the reader survey.