Map: Turnout in Chicago (Ballots cast by Ward, colors reflect relative number of ballots) Still, overall turnout (presented as the raw number of ballots cast in this map from the CDP database, with darker shades meaning more ballots) was highest in the more affluent lakefront, Downtown, and Bungalow Belt wards, as well as on the South Side. Note also that the VEP increased by more than the VAP: this is because naturalized citizens, predominantly from Mexico but also from a lot of other countries, are an ever-increasing share of Chicago’s electorate. It’s hard to tell how big each pool is, but three pieces explain the difference between VEP and registered turnout shifts: people who were already registered and voted last time but not this time newly registered people who kept not voting and people who were mobilized by this election, so registered for the first time and voted. This may have to do with some of Cook County’s and Illinois’s steps to make this part of civic participation easy–unlike other states, where voter restrictions have made it more difficult to register and vote. What’s up with that? Well, there was an increase in voter registration in every part of the city since 2012 (Ward boundaries changed between 20, so it’s not straighforward to compare the old wards to the new ones, but the increase was big everywhere.). However, the turnout of registered voters declined. Registration and Ballot count figures from Chicago Board of Elections. *Census figures for Adult and Voting-eligible Population from 2015, the most recent available. Table: Turnout in Chicago, 2016 General ElectionĪdult Citizen Population (Voting Eligible–VEP) The percent of the eligible population (ie, adult citizens) that cast a vote went up, too. There was a significant increase in ballots cast–about 87,000 more votes. In Chicago, looking closely at the numbers reveals a paradox, which we can see in the table here. Overall across the country, turnout was about the same as in 2012. These reports may have been greatly exaggerated. In the aftermath of the election and in the early voting period, there were some indication that voting rates in urban areas was lower this time around, partially explaining Clinton’s loss. On the other hand, polling showed that neither candidate was very popular overall compared to past nominees, so perhaps turnout would be lower. These factors might drive turnout up, because information was easily available (lowering the costs of voting), and it was hard to be indifferent between the candidates (increasing the benefit of one’s preferred candidate winning). After all, it was clearly a salient election, and the candidates (and their parties) disagreed a lot (on policy and personal issues). We’ll follow up with some demographic analyses shortly.Ĭoming into the election, there was a lot of debate about how the presidential contest would affect turnout. In this post, I’ll take a first cut at the results at the Presidential level. Using the Chicago Democracy Project’s new Chicago Elections Database, and the newly added results from the November 2016 election, we can use recent election results to get a glimpse. We’ll write a bit more about this in future posts.īut how did the votes cast in Chicago fit into this trend? Well, in short, the city and its suburbs overwhelming supported Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates. Across the nation, this relationship got stronger in 2016. Even more than state or region, the city-country divide defines America’s political geography. This connection between national policies, urban communities, and urbanites has strengthened over time, and today urbanites tend to support Democratic candidates in almost all American cities. In particular, big-city residents are much more likely to support Democratic candidates, and to identify as liberal, than suburbanites or rural Americans, even when we account for many other important factors. Partisanship, ideology, and policy preferences are strongly related to place character-that is, whether a person lives in central city, suburb, or rural area. This is particularly true in the dynamics of so-called Red and Blue America. In other ways, though, the actual results of this election reflected more continuity than change. The tone of debate, and some of the ideas being expressed by one candidate in particular-especially doubts about the value of democracy itself-make this year seem like a radical departure from what has come before. The 2016 election season was unprecedented, to say the least.
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