Will Leimenstoll and Calvin Lewis move on to runoff for student body president

In a shocking result Tuesday night, student body president candidates Will Leimenstoll and Calvin Lewis Jr. moved on to a runoff election.

Tim Longest, a frontrunner who received several campus endorsements, was eliminated, receiving just four votes fewer than Lewis, the second-place finisher.

Leimenstoll collected ­­47 percent of the vote and Lewis collected 23.1 percent. They will have another week to campaign before the Feb. 21 election.

The results are preliminary, and still must be certified by the Board of Elections.

Only 4,507 students voted in Tuesday’s general election, down from 7,105 last year.

The three candidates voiced concern earlier this week that new voting software, studentlife.unc.edu, would decrease voter turnout because it requires users to register.

Leimenstoll said he was satisfied with his campaign’s success.

“We’re going to give people a chance to recharge their batteries,” he said.

Lewis said he was relieved that his campaign survived another week.

“Now I can reach out to more people,” he said. “In a runoff there are fewer hands in the cookie jar, so there are more votes to be grabbed.”

Longest said he was shocked by the result, and believed that low turnout might have been to blame for his finish.

“I’m definitely surprised but I understand it’s a very low turnout election season,” he said after the results were announced.

Runoff elections have become a staple of student body president elections. Only twice in the past 16 years has one candidate managed to win outright in a field of three or more candidates.

Leimenstoll collected the most petition signatures of any of the candidates, while Lewis met the deadline only after a 24-hour extension.

Shruthi Sundaram, chairwoman of the Board of Elections, said each member of the board independently tallied the results, and came up with the same outcome.

“I’m 99.9 percent confident the numbers won’t change,” she said.