After arriving at 5:00am at the polling place to find the door locked until 5:15am, I began setting up in a frenzy of activity. We opened on time at 6:00am with a small number of early birds waiting for the polls to open. Things went quite smoothly all day but by 9:00am it was clear that we weren’t going to have a record turnout of the sort that’s been reported during the Democratic primaries elsewhere.
By 10:00am I predicted that when all was said and done we’d have a turnout of 55%, including early voters and absentees. I had a small side-bet with the precinct captain (who expected more) which I won. We actually had a turnout of 57%. Historical experience (the turnout in the precinct is usually about 15% higher than the turnout citywide) on primary turnout in a presidential quadrennial in this precinct is 65%, and significantly higher in the general election.
Here’s how the voters in the precinct, where the people are generally well-informed, well-educated, prosperous, and engaged, voted.
Democrats
| Barack Obama | 53% |
| Hillary Clinton | 43% |
In the highly contentious race for Cook County state’s attorney, Tom Allen got a plurality at 45% of the votes with Anita Alvarez, Larry Suffredin, and
Robert Milan splitting most of the remainder.
Republicans
This precinct has about 6% Republicans. Here’s how they voted for President
| John McCain | 64% |
| Mitt Romney | 32% |
Somebody voted for Ron Paul.
Why the low turnout? I think there are several possibilities. One is that the number of registered voters in the district may be substantially overstated—that would be consistent with the large number of challenged voters I noted. Some have died; some moved away and the people who are living there now either aren’t eligible to vote or haven’t registered to vote.
Based on the citywide turnout the turnout should have been higher:
CHICAGO (CBS) ― Chicago and Cook County election officials Tuesday night said voter turnout was high, but not record-breaking as they had hoped.
As CBS 2’s Pam Zekman reports, about four hours after polls closed, the Chicago Board of Elections officials reported a voter turnout of 51 percent, which is the highest since the 1992 presidential primary.
Cook County Clerk David Orr said voter turnout in suburban Cook County was also impressive.
“I’m going to go ahead and guess that we’re going to get 41 percent, which for a primary in suburban Cook is very good,” Orr said. “We had 40 percent way back in 1992 when Bill Clinton was a young candidate at that time. It was pretty good, which I think it would have been significantly higher had we not had the rain at 4 o’clock.
It may simply be that the neighborhood is changing.
Turnout was lower than expected in Springfield, which was attributed to the weather. I don’t know that it was dangerous weather, but it certainly has been unpleasant the last few days.