The Unraveling of Prop H

Proposition H, the handgun ban measure sponsored by Chris Daly passed by voters last November, has been analyzed by up-and-coming demographic prodigy Dave Latterman. The PDF, complete with precinct maps, is online at Usual Suspects.

The upshot of this report is interesting: Prop H was driven primarily by constituencies that supported it for ideological and cultural reasons rather than policy necessity:

“This leads to the observation that, although H did well throughout the City, it did better in parts of the City less affected by the recent increase in gun violence: BV/HP and WA. With the possible exception of the Mission, which voted quite high for H, it is difficult to conclude the very high Yes on H precincts have similar crime issues than some of the aforementioned areas.”

This exposes H as being driven primarily by political expediency and bias. It’s conceivable the H would not have won if were not on the ballot during the controversial and polarizing Special Election orchestrated by Governor Schwarzenegger. Indeed, another ideological albatross on the statewide level, Prop 73, almost won. Neither H nor 73 would’ve been put on the ballot during a regular election.

The end result is that the city is saddled with a highly embarrassing legal and political paradox, as highlighted by Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders:

"San Francisco is supposed to stand for choice. This is supposed to be a town where tolerant individuals don't pass laws that, in essence, say: If I don't do it, you shouldn't either; if you do, you go to jail. Yet the gun ban ends choice -- for the law-abiding, at least."

Nevertheless, every cloud has a silver lining. Another interesting tidbit from Latterman’s report:

"It is possible that for the first time we’re seeing the new demographic in D6 start to have a slight effect. In Appendix 1, I display a boxplot of the district residuals of the above regression, which shows if the results come out as one thinks they would. While D5, as usual, is higher than the other districts, D6 – usually high – is a bit lower, with the lowest median residual value of all the districts. This simply means D6, as a whole, voted lower on Prop H than we would expect given its current demographics. Since the detailed demographic work was completed from 2000 Census data, this could indicate a significant demographic shift affecting electoral results."

The upshot: Commandant Daly’s constituency is crumbling.