I won. Very cool. Go me.

But I won by how much exactly? There's a surprising amount of nuance to the answer.

The time: November, 2025
The place: Shamokin, Pennsylvania
The office: City Council

The results are still unofficial, but I have numbers to play with– so play with them I shall. Here are the figures as reported by the local newspaper:

"SHAMOKIN — Political newcomer Dakota Schuck defeated his opponents for a seat on Shamokin City Council, according to unofficial election results.

Schuck, an independent, earned a total of 656 votes in a landslide victory, 124 of which were mail-in or absentee ballots and 532 of which were cast at polling stations Tuesday.

While Republican candidate Michael Deitz Jr. was the second-highest vote getter on the ballot with 312 in-person votes and 69 mail-in or absentee votes, for a total of 381 votes.

There were 380 write-in votes recorded in unofficial results. A dozen votes were cast by mail-in or absentee and 368 write-in votes were cast in person.

Republican candidate Joseph Leschinskie earned 246 in-person votes and 36 mail-ins, totaling 282 votes. He is currently serving a state prison sentence for two criminal cases."

– Mackenzie Witt, THE NEWS-ITEM Nov 4, 2025 Updated Nov 5, 2025

Several people in local government have congratulated me on my win and and commented that I now have a rather large political mandate. I'm told a landslide victory of this magnitude isn't the norm around here. Perhaps I'll look into how rare it is later, but first I am stumped by an even simpler question: What percentage of the vote did I receive? Seems simple, right? Well, it's complicated by the fact that there were two open seats on Council.

In total, the number of votes cast were:

Calculating my percentage of the vote is easy:

But hang on, every voter got two votes because there were two open seats. The calculation that shows I got 38.6% of the vote assumes that all of those votes were available to me, but they weren't.

I mean, yes, technically someone could have both selected my name on the ballot and then also included me as a write-in, but I suspect that's not allowed. I also promoted a write-in candidate who wasn't on the ballot, so if anything it's likely that someone voting for me might have also voted for her.

To get an accurate percentage, my first instinct is to cut the total in half and recalculate:

I can now calculate my share of the votes based on the number of votes available to me:

Okay wow, that's a much bigger victory than my first calculation suggested. But this version also has potential flaws. The fact that it was an odd number that couldn't be cleanly cut in half is a hint in that direction. It's quite possible that people only voted for one candidate, so the assumptions that go into this calculation aren't exactly representative of the realities being measured either. They are, however, almost certainly less wrong than the assumption that I could have gotten all 1,699 votes.

So far I have two answers, neither of which is perfect. I got somewhere between 38.6% and 77.2% of the vote, depending on how you calculate it. The more realistic answer skews towards 77.2%, as the assumption made here (everyone voted for two candidates) is less absurd than the assumptions made for the smaller value (everyone who voted twice could have voted for me twice).

Even though I did win in a landslide, receiving hundreds more votes than the next-highest candidate, it could also be argued that I underperformed by 7 votes. You see, the two other candidates on the ballot, MD and JL, were running together, so it might be an interesting exercise to add their votes together and compare them to mine.

Together, these two candidates running on the same ticket received 7 more votes than me.

So what's the "real" answer? What's true?

They're all true. I won 38.6% of the vote. I also won 77.2% of the vote. I also (from a certain perspective) lost the popular vote by 7. All of these perspectives exist at the same time and have some element of truth to them, but none of them capture the whole picture.

I won by a landslide according to the law. In a democratic election, it could be argued that this is the only really important answer. It's a winner-take-all system.

I won. Very cool. What's next?

The most important thing now? I have responsibilities to everyone in Shamokin– whether they voted for me, against me, or didn't vote at all. To business owners who are stakeholders in this city's future but don't have a vote. To visitors and tourists who spend their time and money here.

The real answer to how big my win was, and by extension my political mandate is: it's big enough to get me into office. Big or small, the plan is the same: to collaboratively steer this city towards a brighter future for everyone involved.

But it's fun to explore the nuance sometimes. Thanks for nerding out with me as I explored various perspectives on what seems at first like a simple question.