AUSTIN (KXAN) — Voters in Travis County’s December runoff elections will determine whether to keep the unified, progressive makeup of the Austin City Council, or whether to replace incumbents with more conservative peers.
In Tuesday’s election, incumbent Council Member Jimmy Flannigan is up against Mackenzie Kelly for the District 6 seat. The district covers far northwest Austin to Lake Travis, and up into the portions of Austin within Williamson County.
The District 10 race features Council Member Alison Alter against challenger Jennifer Virden. District 10 stretches from west of downtown from the MoPac Expressway, then north to U.S. Highway 183, all encompassed by Travis County.
Latest updates:
7:25 p.m.
The initial totals show 11,475 votes in the District 6 race from both Travis and Williamson Counties. Kelly is leading the race with 5,955 votes (around 52% of the vote) over Flannigan’s 5,520 (48.1%).
The initial Travis County totals show Alter leading the District 10 race with 9,538 votes (51%) over Virden’s 9,165 votes (49%).
Leading up to the election
During the Nov. 3 general election, no candidate in the District 6 or District 10 races received more than 50% of the vote, so the two candidates who received the most votes moved on to the runoff election.
Both Flannigan and Alter received more votes than their respective challengers in the November election when 45,433 people voted in the District 10 race and 35,254 people voted in the District 6 race. There were 18,511 votes in Travis County and 16,743 in Williamson County, as the district straddles both.
But as we’ve reported, runoff elections tend to have significantly lower turnout than the general elections in Travis County.
Travis County Clerk’s Office reports 22,209 people cast ballots in-person and 19,306 people voted by mail during early voting.
For the past two years, all 11 members of the Austin City Council — while they may have differed intensely on certain policy issues– have been generally progressive and unified in their ideals.
Kelly and Virden have both positioned themselves as more conservative alternatives to their opponents.
Follow KXAN for updates Tuesday on the results of these races.
The November totals
In November, Flannigan received 40.2% of the votes and Kelly received 33.4% of the votes. A little more than half of this district’s residents live in Travis County and the rest live in Williamson County, so these percentages reflect the totals from both counties.
At the November election, Alter received 34.2% and Virden received 25.4% of the vote.
Flannigan and Alter have both competed in runoff elections before.
In 2014, Flannigan lost to Don Zimmerman in a runoff by just 191 votes and went on to win against Zimmerman in 2016 by a large enough margin that a runoff was not needed. In 2016, Alter secured a win of the District 10 council seat after she earned 4,142 more votes than Sherri Gallo in the runoff election.
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