Mayor and City Council Elections

The final campaign days were characterized by testy interactions between the candidates running for mayor in Houston city unlike last years presidential elections. From the article, Houston Politics (2008), it is clear that last year’s presidential elections in Houston had little if any ideological pitched battle. The Mayoral candidates had a hard-fought contest with lobbing attacks for months. Though the margins were not that close, Parker at 31%, Locke 26%, Brown 22%, Morale 20% and three minors at 1%. Morales refused to concede until all the returns came in, the only conservative in the race. He remained strong through out the campaign and ran virtually with no money, no endorsement compared with his opponent.

In both the Houston Mayor election and last years presidential elections the theory was solely about Obama. The article, Politics Today (2009), shows that with little efforts great numbers turned out for Obama. This was proved by Democrats win in places it was not necessarily expected to win. Such issues as keeping the voters from learning the truth about their spending on campaigns, their families and promises on economy change characterized the two elections. This year’s election for the mayor was one of the closest in the recent memory, just like last year’s presidential election. This was confirmed by Locke acknowledgement that he path was difficult but not impossible in the article, Politics Today, (2009).

Houston City Elections

Though Houston city elections are technically non-partisan, the campaign was under fire from both the Republican and the Democratic candidates, to an extent Mayor Bill White and Sheriff Tommy decided to pull off in the Mayoral election, according to the article, Houston Politics, (2008). Voters are people who make who process information in the light of their altitude and belief in order to reach a decision (Politics Today 2009). The information in a candidate’s campaign and what is reflect of them in the mass media through debates in primaries to the their speech forms a decision background for the voters. For this reason presidential election should be characterized by high information.

Surveys done by Politics Today (2009), shows that high proportions of candidates cannot recall names of candidates at the time of elections. Those who could recall candidate’s names possessed sufficient information about the candidate. Names on the ballot boxes triggered evaluation of candidates by voters. In most cases this was influenced by pre-existing impression. If the impression is based on meaningful information, which can either be of positive or negative connotation, the voters’ choice will be that of a well informed person (Politics Today 2009).

Providing the candidate’s party affiliation on the ballot has fundamental impacts on voters’ choice. Majority of voters have positive or negative altitude towards two major parties and most tend to identify with one or the other. Even in presidential election where voters have a good deal of information about the candidate, the voter’s altitude towards the party is powerful influence on their choice (Houston Chronicles 2009). Thus parties play a significant role of making the difference in the voters’ altitude towards the party in a non-partisan election. Their effect depends on the proportion of voters who are aware of at least one candidate’s affiliation, and in most non-partisan election the proportion is low (Houston Chronicles 2009).