Cambridge Elections: Numbers Count & What they Reveal About Voter Housing Priorities

Figure 1:  number of first choice council votes , percentages, and the rounds in which they were elected.

Recently we learned that State Senator Will Brownsberger defeated Daniel Lander for the state representative office by only 35 votes. In the 2024 election, incumbent State Representative Marjorie Decker beat Evan McCay by only 41 votes. Every vote clearly counts. And some elections are won and lost on fewer than a handful of votes.
 
Cambridge City Council elections are equally important to look at from the vantage of voter numbers and issues of policy.
 
Key takeaways of this   research  post

• In the 2025 City Council - seven of nine reached the quota only after transfers; only Siddiqui and McGovern reached it on first choices.
• The turnout in the 2025 election was only 37.8%
• No City Councillor was first choice of more than 4.23% of registered voters
• 74% of  our Councillors were endorsed by groups opposing solely “market solutions” to housing

 
Our System of Voting: A Review
In our system of proportional ranked-choice voting, all valid ballots are transferable to another candidate if one’s top choice is not elected. However, this is not the same as electing city councillors with substantive representation among either the city residents or those who vote.
 
Put another way, in 2025, no candidate or elected city councillor received a broad first-choice mandate nor do any represent the interests of one or more specific neighborhoods.
 
How broad were each candidates first-choice support?
Answer: Rather modest in relation to the total registered electorate. See   Figure 1 above.

In   short, no councillor was the first choice of more than 4.23% of registered voters. Nolan received first-choice support from only 2.22% of registered voters and Denise Simmons was not far ahead of her with 2.24% vote. Six of the nine councillors were elected with less than 3% of the registered voters supporting them in the 2025 election.
 
This does not mean that the later winners (rounds 3 through 14) were improperly elected. Ranked-choice voting intentionally recognizes secondary preferences. The results are better described as showing that the candidate:

• “Is acceptable to a transferable coalition of participating voters,”
• “Received enough first-, second-, and later-choice support to reach the 2,537-vote quota—about 10% of valid ballots.”

This is very different from being directly chosen by a large portion of Cambridge through first-choice votes.
 
Stated another way: About 90% of valid ballots ultimately contributed to an elected councillor.
And, only about one-third of registered voters cast a ballot that ultimately remained with a winner.
 
Cambridge’s system of elections, in short, produces a citywide council based on participating voters, and our elections do not promote high turnout, broad first-choice mandates, or any real neighborhood accountability.

On the degree to which issues and mandates matter, let's look at ABC endorsed candidates and the issue of the citywide upzoning which they championed as did their candidates. Marc Mcgovern got 2,864 #1 votes or 11.29% of the total. Burhan azeem got 1,999 first choice votes or 7.88% of the votes. Denise Simmons got 1,642 votes or 6.47% of the total share of #1 votes. Those with ABC plus other endorsements included Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Sumbul Siddiqui. Jivan got 1892 #1 votes or 2.79% of total #1 votes and Simmons got 1642 #1 votes or 2.42%. Therefore together the three ABC exclusive members got only 6,505% of number 1 votes or 25.64%. Together Sobrinho-Wheeler and Siddique got another 4,761 number 1 votes or 18.77%. All told the ABC endorsed candidates received only 44.41% of #1 votes.  So the citywide upzoning (MFHO) received the support of less than half of all voters in the last  election,   and 1/4 of all #1 votes for a total of 6,505 #1 votes out of 25, 366   #1 votes.

So, in short, together ABC candidates received only 1/4 of all number 1 votes here. This is hardly mandate to tear down existing sustainable homes and force out renters who are living there, all to profit developers and bring our housing costs up.
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What the 2025 Cambridge City Council election numbers show
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Figure 2. Voters,  transfers, and   How Results are   Determined.

Geographic Representation is Uneven

Every City Council winner received some first-choice votes in every ward and nearly every precinct, so no one was elected solely by one neighborhood. Some candidates nevertheless had pronounced geographic bases:

• Sumbul Siddiqui received 21.6% of her first choices from Ward 11; in Precinct 11-2 she received 49.1% of valid first choices. Both are in the western part of North Cambridge.
• Marc McGovern’s largest base was Ward 4 (Cambridgeport and the Port).
• Denise Simmons’s was Ward 3 (the Port).
• Cathie Zusy, Tim Flaherty and Patty Nolan together split the vote in Ward 9 (Neighborhood 9). Zusy received 24.0% here; Flaherty received 24.8%, and; Nolan received 23.4% here.
• Councillors Al-Zubi and Azeem had the most geographically dispersed first-choice coalitions.

Figure 3  Ward distribution of   votes

Voter Coalitions:
 
The above geographic findings expose one of the principal factors in Cambridge’s at-large arrangement: proportionality it is organized around voter coalitions. This is because No ward is
guaranteed its own councillor, and no councillor is uniquely accountable for a ward. This also makes it harder to challenge (the local equivalent of “primary”) an incumbent councillor.
 
A neighborhood can have several politically aligned councillors - or no obvious neighborhood advocate.
 
This illustrates a central tradeoff in Cambridge’s at-large arrangement: proportionality is organized around voter coalitions, not geography. No ward is guaranteed its own councillor, and no councillor is uniquely accountable for a ward. A neighborhood can have several politically aligned
councillors—or no obvious geographic advocate.
 
If Neighborhoods are not the primary criteria for electability, what is? The answer is various coalitions focused on one or another political issue or theme.

Currently we have  a number of groups – some local, some national, and some regional, and some crossing over between all three.

• ABC (A Better Cambridge) is pro-development (more and taller housing especially – and market driven responses to housing need, the removal of longstanding zoning requirements, and are linked to national developers’ groups.

• CBS (Cambridge Bike Safety) is at once local, regional, and national in terms of its funding and financial support. In the last election they were closely allied with ABC, endorsing many of their top candidates.
• CARE Housing:    they focus on housing safeguards in   neighborhoods and on protecting solar access.
• CCC (Cambridge Citywide Coalition) is associated with local neighborhood groups and promoting best environmental, design and other practices. It is entirely local.
• CResA (Cambridge Residents Alliance) is local and has focused on more livability, affordable housing, and increasingly on things like police violence – often consistent with national groups like DSA and Our Revolution.
• DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and OR (Our Revolution) are nationally aligned groups closely associated with Bernie Sanders, and supporting policies of affordable housing but also other issues.

​Candidate Alliances: what the first-choice votes show

The comparison below uses first-choice votes for the 2025 elected councillors and the official election totals.

The City reports vote counts, not alliance categories; the ABC-only, ABC + other, CCC, CARE Housing,  CRESA, DSA and other labels are the analytical coding used in this post. These categories overlap: a candidate may appear in more than one row, and the rows must not be added together.     ​CBS is not shown separately here because their top choice candidates were all closely identified with ABC.  [1][2][3][4][5] 
 
The Results of the Last Election
 
ABC-only versus the broader ABC-linked group
 
Using the working definition of ABC as the most explicitly pro-developer, market-approach to housing grouping, the strict ABC-only bloc which consisted of candidates McGovern, Simmons, and Azeem together received 6,505 first-choice votes: 25.64% of all valid ballots and 9.59% of registered voters. They won 3 of 9 seats. [1][2][3][5].

In brief the ABC pro-market approach to housing one roughly one quarter of the valid   ballots.
 
Several ABC candidates also had endorsement from other groups. These broader ABC-and-other group
endorsees included candidates Siddiqui and Sobrinho-Wheeler, who were also associated with CResA on the   one hand and DSA on the other. The five ABC-only and ABC-other linked elected councillors received a total   of 11,266 first choice votes, or 44.41% of all valid ballots and 16.61% of registered voters.

This group of ABC and others won 5   of 9 Council seats. [1][2][3][5]

However two of these councillors represent coalitions who do not favor   market-exclusive approaches to housing.
 
What this also means is that 55.6% of all valid ballots (a clear majority) were not in favor of market-based
approaches to housing at all. This does not mean they were uninterested in housing, but they wanted to find
better solutions than simply leaving it up to financial drivers and the removal of zoning, professional design
input and other factors. See chart below:

Figure   4.  The 55.59% residual is not a direct measure of a unified non-ABC vote; it includes votes for non-ABC elected councillors and for candidates who were not elected.

Among elected councillors, the mutually exclusive seat categories are: 3 of 9 (33.3%) ABC-only; 2 of 9 (22.2%) ABC + other; and 4 of 9 (44.4%) with no ABC listing. The broader ABC-linked group therefore holds 5 of 9 seats (55.6%), a simple majority but not a two-thirds supermajority. CARE, CCC, CRESA, and DSA are overlapping policy and endorsement groupings, so they belong in the alliance table rather than being used to create an additive seat total.

Figure   5: The broader ABC-linked group holds a simple majority of seats, but not a two-thirds supermajority.
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Alliance groupings and rankings
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The table below shows first-choice candidate comparisons. The rows clearly overlap: CRESA and DSA share councillors, and CARE Housing overlaps with CCC and CRESA through the elected candidates it endorsed. These percentages are based on 25,366 valid ballots and 67,823 registered voters. Alliance rows are analytical groupings, not separate voting blocs, and must not be added together. [1][2][3][5][6]

Figure   6: ​The   principal voting blocks. 

Conclusions:

What the voting alliances suggest  - and what they DO NOT  suggest.

Coalitions (or political alliances) are one of the strongest indicators of candidate suggest, but this is not always the case, as for example Tim Flaherty who won election in 2025. He did so, however, with the endorsement and large support of Paul Toner’s supporters, after Toner chose not to run.

On the issue of pro-development and related approaches to housing specifically ABC-only candidates hold one-third of the Council; they received just 25.64% of valid first-choice votes. On the broader grouping of ABC-and-other coalition linked candidates, they now hold 5 of 9 seats (55.6%), a simple majority but well below a two-thirds supermajority; their first-choice votes were still only 44.41% of all valid ballots.
CARE Housing’s endorsements of Nolan and Zusy provide another example of an overlapping policy alliance. CARE’s neighborhood housing safeguards and solar-access priorities overlap in important ways with CCC. 

And for all candidates, six of the nine won fewer than 3% of the first round support of Cambridge registered voters. And the two candidate vote getters, each one fewer than 5% of the registered voters here [1][2][3][5]

Cambridge, in short, is not being represented in ways that convey the larger views of the residents of Cambridge. Policies have been put in place that convey at best the views of a very small minority of individuals in the city.

Sources
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[1] City of Cambridge Election Commission, “2025 Municipal Election Official Results - November 14th Update.”
[2] City of Cambridge, “Official Results - Municipal Election For City Council: First Choices by Ward and Precinct,” November 14, 2025.
[3] City of Cambridge, “2025 Municipal Election Voter Turnout.”
[4] City of Cambridge, “Count-by-Count City Council Official Results” / ChoicePlus Council Round Detail Report.
[5] A Better Cambridge, “2025 City Council Endorsements.”
[6] CARE Housing, 2025 election endorsement materials; Cambridge City Council, Policy Order 2025-7 concerning solar access and Registered Solar Energy Systems. Official policy-order record
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