Moderate voters proved to be the decisive voting bloc in San Francisco's mayor's race, according to an analysis of ballots by The University of San Francisco. They gave Ed Lee an insurmountable advantage.

In neighborhoods with a large percentage of moderate voters, including Chinatown and the city's west side, Lee was the overwhelming first choice.

“People like to tell us how liberal the city is, but it’s not,” said David Latterman, associate director of the Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good at USF. “Internally, we’re pretty centrist.”

Latterman and Corey Cook, a professor of politics at USF, analyzed individual ballots from San Francisco’s first competitive, city-wide ranked-choice election for mayor, district attorney, and sheriff. They released their analysis Tuesday.

They found that progressive candidates could not attract enough moderate voters to win outright. Eleven percent of all ballots cast included three progressive candidates: John Avalos for mayor, David Onek for district attorney, and Ross Mirkarimi for sheriff. Avalos and Onek were both runner-ups in their races; Mirkarimi won, but only because two other candidates in the race split the moderate vote.

"We like progressive ideas more than the candidates," Latterman said.

Under the city's ranked-choice system, voters selected their top three choices for mayor, sheriff, and district attorney. None of the candidates in those races received a majority of first-choice votes, but District Attorney George Gascon came the closest with 42 percent.

Lee received the fewest first-choice votes with 31 percent, but he received the most second- and third-choice votes, indicating that he had a larger base of support than any other candidate.

“The bulk of the city is willing to give Ed the chance to do his job," Latterman said.

Click here to read their report detailing voters’ preferences and voting patterns among communities. 

Use the navigation below to see a map for the races for mayor, district attorney, and sheriff. Click on a shaded region of the map to view details from a voting precinct. Click on the different images of graphs to reveal statistics about every ballot cast in a selected precinct and demographic data provided by the 2010 U.S. Census.

The Bay Citizen processed ballots released by the Department of Elections on November 17 to reveal voter preferences precinct-by-precinct. Using block-level data from the 2010 census, these maps incorporate broad demographic statistics showing the race and age of residents living in each precinct.

Browse the map above and tell us what you find in the comments.