A quick word about turnout (The Next Mayor)

With 76% of the divisions reporting, there have been 222,066 total votes cast in the mayoral race.

Extrapolating to 100% results in about 292,000 total votes. Given the registration data that's available on the state's website, that works out to roughly 29.4% voter turnout.

How does that compare to past, open seat elections?

In 1991, the official election turnout was 60.8% or 484,575 voters participating out of 795,957 registered voters. In 1999, the official turnout of registered voters was 44.8%, with 441,981 voters participating out of 985,912 registered.

Of course, it's very unlikely that with the population of the city shrinking as it did during the 90s that the total number of actual registered voters increased so dramatically. The absolute number of votes cast declined by about 9% which tracks pretty closely to overall population loss. What does that mean? Probably that despite the difference in turnout percentage, the two races were pretty close in actual voter participation.

Now... 8 years later... the number of absolute votes cast looks like it'll be about 292,000 for a drop of about 34 percent (!)

So yes, turnout looks like it will be a record low for an open seat race. To put it in perspective, Ed Rendell's re-election in 1995 had an official election turnout was 38.6%, with 327,863 voters participating. So it's looking like this year's walk-over will top Rendell's walk-over in it's overall effect on voter interest.

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