• Fun With Stats Through The Lens of Wildomar City Council Elections

I asked Perplexity AI (which I've found to be one of the better ones) the following question: 

Let's test your ability to retrieve statistics in election results. 

Okay, I'm thinking of the city of Wildomar. It's not a very old city. There haven't been that many elections. So which city council member, since 2008, has received the most votes? 

Second question: which city council member received the highest percentage? 

Two different statistics.

Most votes, highest percentage. On your mark, get set, go!

I still find it entertaining to talk to these AIs as if they're a real person (yes, I'm easily amused, lol).

My guess had been that Bridgette Moore or Bob Cashman would have been the highest vote getter, as he had the most votes in the inaugural election in 2008.

I found that the single election top vote-getter is:

Bridgette Moore! 

In 2012 she got nearly 5,000 votes, a total of 4,874.

As you can see from the graphic above, there are two legitimate categories for highest percentage. 

First are the uncontested examples

You may be wondering why those uncontested seats were on the ballot, but the two uncontested seats in 2026 were not.

There is a state law that requires uncontested seats to be on the ballot if there is another item from the city. In 2018, Measure A was on the ballot, so both District 1 and 5 had to be on the ballot, too, despite there being no opponent.

That's happened this year in Lake Elsinore. 

For uncontested seats, the record is 100%. Even if the total number of votes had been 11, it still would have been 100%. 

The second category is for a contested seat

That goes to Mr. Wildomar Rap, Joseph Morabito, with a highwater mark of 71.18%.

Just edging out Bridgette Moore's 70.9%. It can't go unsaid that she had TWO opponents, and got over 700 more votes than Morabito (sorry about the third-person nonsense). 

A fair thing to note, not that it diminishes the numbers, but District 4 happens during Presidential years, and the turnout is always much greater in those years. 

Imagine if we were talking about Home Run leaders and one person played in a bandbox like Fenway Park, and the other played in the old Houston Astrodome, lol. 

As of the last count in the 2026 District 5 City Council election, incumbent Ashlee DePhillippo had a comfortable lead, and Wildomar Rap declared her the winner.