Republicans

Philadelphia Votes, 2019

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Philadelphia re-elected its mayor, Jim Kenney, last week. As usual, the Democrat won resoundingly, though his share of the vote dropped from 85% to 80% since 2015. As this map shows, the losses were mainly in Northeast and South Philly

In the City Council races, the big news was the election of an at-large member from the Working Families Party, a socialist faction that was contesting the Philly elections for the first time. Candidate Kendra Brooks took one of the two at-large seats reserved for the non-majority party, both of which had been held by Republicans since they were created in 1951.

This map shows the relative strength between the Republicans and the WFP. The radicals were strongest in the gentrifying areas surrounding Center City, but also showed some strength in parts of North and West Philly.

The scale here is by percentage points, not a percentage of the total GOP+WFP vote. In many of these divisions, that means the difference between 1% and 2%.

Philadelphia Votes, Part 2

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After posting that map of Philadelphia’s presidential votes the other day, I wanted to see how much had changed since 2012. So I came up with this:

2012-pres-philly-ward-divison-map

You’re still looking at a vast sea of blue, but the differences jump out at you. Clinton and Obama both won the city easily, but Obama won it much more thoroughly. Trump won wide swathes of the 45th ward where Obama had carried every single division four years earlier. Trump’s victories in the Northeast were also much deeper and widespread. Even in the dark blue areas of North and West Philly, we can see that Obama was the stronger candidate. Where Clinton had three divisions with 100% of the votes for her, Obama had twenty-seven. The pattern held throughout the area. Clinton didn’t lose much of Obama’s totals, just a handful of votes in each division. But it was enough.