Here are the results of straw ballots taken on the mayor's race and the casino question during the 10 Deliberations Days events held last Wednesday through Sunday.
Several caveats: These results bear no resemblance to scientific polling done with a true random sampling. All they tell you is the views of a large but self-selected group, the kind of people who would come out on a beautiful spring day to discuss city issues and listen to Council candidates debate at an Inquirer-sponsored event.
Also, I'm not sure our procedures for collecting, counting and preserving these ballots would pass muster with the U.N. High Commissioner for Elections. We did the best we could with our little staff under often chaotic conditions. About 450 people attended the events, but we don't have that many ballots. A number of people who came just to see the Council debates apparenly arrived after the straw balloting was done.
Take the results for what they are worth, with a pinch of Morton's if you are so inclined.
Anyway:
Mayor: 318 ballots counted (not counting Klein JCC event for GOP at-large candidates, where few of the votes went to Democrats)
Nutter: 162 votes - 51 percent
Brady: 57 votes - 18 percent
Knox: 42 - 13 percent
Evans: 35 - 11 percent
Fattah: 21 - 7 percent
Interesting, huh?
People voted after having a 15-minute table discussion about the qualities of leadership they were seeking in a mayor, and doing a rapid-response exercise calling out words and phrases they associated with each candidate. We'll report on the fascinating results of the free association exercise in another blog post; we're still going through the data.
Here are the results of the casino straw vote. A yes vote is a vote to put limits on where casinos could go in the city, in effect to block the Sugarhouse and Foxwoods sites.
Yes: 246 - 76 percent
No: 78 - 24 percent
These votes came after a table discussion of the pros and cons of casinos. Casino-Free Philadelphia sent volunteers to every session, who were vigorous but quite respectful in making the anti-casino case. They are to be praised for the amount of time they put in and the way they conducted themselevs. Plenty of folks at tables made the case in reply that the jobs and tax reductions promised by the casinos were well worth the risks.
I came away thinking that if the casino ballot question were allowed by the Supreme Court, the vote would be very, very close.
Chris Satullo
Comments (2)
The Question #1 straw vote (on creating a 1,500 foot buffer between casinos and homes, schools, parks and places of worship) came up with nearly the same results as the Global Strategies poll conducted a couple of months ago (that was 79% in favor of the reasonable buffer zone). There is no question that the casino industry has done their own polling, it is the reason why they worked so tirelessly to knock Question #1 off the ballot. We are looking forward to Tuesday when voters will finally get their say on Question #1 through PhillysBallotBox.org. It will be through the continuing commitment of volunteers throughout this city that we will strengthen democracy.
Posted by Jethro Heiko | May 9, 2007 7:41 AM
Posted on May 9, 2007 07:41
Satullo continues to patronize the large majority of Philadelphians who want to protect their neighborhoods from 2 Las Vegas-sized casinos. When will he realize that this is a movement with great support across the city? We want something better for our riverfront, and we're developing alternatives to casinos -- witness the recent community design workshop sponsored by Neighbors Allied for the Best Riverfront 2 weeks ago. See http://www.nabrhood.org for more details.
Posted by Jeremy Beaudry | May 9, 2007 9:21 AM
Posted on May 9, 2007 09:21