April 23, 2025 Story by: Editor
This is the lowest turnout in recent years. For the 2022 mayoral election of Sheng Thao, 52 percent of voters cast a ballot. In the 2018 mayoral election, 69 percent of Oaklanders voted.
North Oakland and the Oakland Hills had the highest turnout – neighborhoods that are generally whiter and middle to upper class. Fruitvale and Deep East Oakland had the lowest turnout, showing historic barriers for the mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods.
Few campaign events or community education efforts happened in Fruitvale or East Oakland. Lee spoke to her supporters today about unifying the politically divided city.
As of Friday morning, an estimated 90,000 people, or 36% of registered voters cast their ballots, far fewer than would be ideal in one of the most consequential local elections in recent memory.
Approximately 250,000 Oakland residents are currently registered to vote, according to data compiled by the county Registrar of Voters. All registered voters were mailed ballots weeks before the April 15 deadline to vote, and election officials make voting easy by allowing people to return their ballots in the mail, deliver them to drop boxes, or vote in-person at voting centers that open up days before the deadline. But few voters actually filled out their ballots and returned them to be counted.
According to Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis, probably around 91,000 voters completed and returned their ballots, thus the 36% estimated turnout.
This is far lower turnout than past Oakland mayoral elections. In 2022, 126,000 Oakland voters participated, a turnout of 52%. And in 2018, 69% of Oakland voters returned their ballots. Turnout for this mayoral election was more like a primary election than a general election.
Voters in Districts 1 and 4 voted at the highest rates, while voters in Districts 5 and 7 participated the least. Both districts are whiter and have higher average household income levels than Oakland’s other five City Council districts.
District 4 includes much of the Oakland Hills, including Montclair, Claremont, and Shepherd Canyon. District 1 covers Rockridge, Temescal, and Piedmont Avenue. Eleven percent of D4 voting-age residents are Black and 8% are Latino. In D1, 18% of voting age residents are Black and 8% are Latino.
District 5, which includes Fruitvale, Melrose, and Peralta-Hacienda, and District 7, which encompasses Sobrante Park, Castlemont, and Fitchburg, have more Black and Latino residents, many of whose households have lower incomes compared to other parts of the city. Twenty-three percent of voting age D5 residents are Black and 32% are Latino. And in District 7, 49% of voting age residents are Black and 29% are Latino.
One possible explanation for the low turnout among some communities is the disconnect between residents’ lived experiences and what happens inside City Hall, said Pecolia Manigo, executive director of Oakland Rising Action, a political organization that aims to mobilize low-income and immigrant voters in East Oakland.
“People may not always see the connection between their issues and electing someone in office,” she said.
Low-income communities may not pay close attention to local politics because they’re focused on surviving and going about their everyday lives, Manigo said.
Oakland Rising Action’s work, she explained, is to educate residents on how elections affect their daily lives, even if the impacts aren’t immediate. (In the most recent election, the group also spent $26,000 supporting Barbara Lee.)
“A lot of families are like, ‘I need a job right now, I need rent protections, I need these serious issues addressed,’” Manigo said. “But voting does provide an opportunity for voters to connect what their immediate needs are to what local government has the ability to address.”
Manigo, who ran for the Oakland Unified School District board in District 4 in 2022, said predominantly white and higher-income households tend to have a “generational understanding of the importance of voting” early and often, whereas immigrants and lower-income families do not.
Voters in Oakland’s majority non-white, immigrant, and low-income flatland neighborhoods also experience more barriers to voting due to redlining, poverty, and other socioeconomic barriers, according to Manigo. “I’ve never heard District 1 residents say, ‘I didn’t get my ballot.’ I’ve never heard District 4 residents say, ‘I don’t know how to register to vote.’ I’ve never heard any of those residents ever say that they don’t know if they have the right to vote,” she said. “There is a class privilege that they have.”
Truckie Evans, a West Oakland resident and bicycle activist, said many communities in Oakland, especially Black residents, feel forgotten by the government and do not vote because they don’t believe it makes a difference in their lives.
“A lot of Black folks don’t believe their votes count. And then there’s not enough time spent among that population helping them better understand why it’s important to vote, and what happens when they don’t,” Evans said. “They’re unfamiliar with the candidates, so to ask them to vote when they don’t really know what’s going on? I can see why some folks don’t show up.”
Evans said he’s disappointed about the low turnout because communities that decide elections get more attention from the city government and more opportunities to thrive. With the margins of victories so small in Oakland elections, a more engaged group of marginalized voices could make a difference.
Source: The Oaklandside
