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Clout St – Local politics

« Daley wants parking ticket amnesty | Main | Daley gushes over Obama win, unfurls tribute banner »
Originally posted: November 5, 2008
Turnout lower than predicted

Posted by David Kidwell at 1:38 p.m.

Voter turnout throughout Chicago and its collar counties fell short of predictions by elections officials who expected to shatter records Tuesday. Their predictions ranged from 80 to 90 percent turnout. Not even close.

Some elections officials said the turnout was impressive anyway given that Illinois was never really in play for the presidential race. Here are the local unofficial turnout figures, not including straggler votes such as provisional and some late absentee ballots:

Chicago (with 97 % precincts counted): 1,037,540 votes case of 1,497,292 registered – 69.29 percent

What seems somewhat clear is that $35K gets you a withdrawn pardon, but $500K gets you a pardon that sticks.

FYI: Bush’s yearly fundraising dinner for Republican congressional candidates ion 2007 generated $15.4 million $27 million inb 2006 and $23 million in 2005 and 2004. That’s from just one dinner.

At the time of Bush’s reelection in November 2004, 661 people had become elite Bush contributors who raised at least $100,000 for Bush’s campaign in 2000 or 2004. In fact, 127 donors raised $100,000 or more for Bush twice–in 2000 and 2004.

McCain had 34,070 donors who gave $2300+ (49% of his contributions). Obama had 57,501 donors who gave $2,300+ (27% of his contributions). See http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/donordems.php?sortby=2.

That’s why $30K or $60K is small potatoes.

A total of 1,485,352 Chicagoans are registered to vote for the upcoming Nov. 4, 2008 Presidential General Election, an increase of 177,833 (13.60%) in the eight months since the Primary Election and the highest registration total for a presidential election since 1992.

Chicago Election Board Chairman Langdon D. Neal said the net increase in voters is most noteworthy because 83,360 (more than two-fifths) of the increase came only in the final week before the Oct. 7 registration deadline.

“This last-minute crush of registrations was nothing short of monumental. Chicago voters gave new meaning to the expression ‘better late than never,’” Neal said. “In all, we handled more than 100,000 forms and letters from that final week, because we also had more than 30,000 voters change and update their records.”

Yet Black ward/precinct voting was down.

2008 Presidential

2004 Presidential

2000 Presidential

Click on the ward number at the left column for precinct results.

2008 Registered voters

2008 Ballots cast

You can pick year of election and which contest via drop down menus at this page

I need to add in another column or two on the spread sheets merging in the new voter registration status and historic election results for GWB,Kerry and Gore.

The short answer is it looks like there were about 180k new Black voters in Chicago which should have pushed total numbers up for this ‘historic election’ to new highs.

The actual lower vote count goes exactly 180 out from that expectation.

I would really like to see a full independent audit of the results to see if something like only black votes managed to survive the polling places.

I would also like to know if there was word on the street that this was an election only Blacks should show up for and it really would be in your best interest to have ‘other activities’ to occupy your time on that day.

If that turns out you end up with

More new Black voter + original Black voters – suppressed voters = election result.

The vote result percentages are already very suspect but if we have a nearly 100% black turnout in precincts that have voters that are 8 or 10% other ethnic groups then something is wrong.

The reported figure at the Chicago Elections office reflect that even with more Black voters total registered in the districts the ward turnouts were down by about 3% from prior elections.

I am not able to justify that with everybody there supposedly want to get out to vote for their ‘favorite son or homie’.

Ed–I wouldn’t call $30K or even $60K “big money”. Mark Rich’s former wife, Denise, contributed between $250,000 and $500,000 to Clinton’s foundation. And the father of the New York real-estate developer whose pardon was withdrawn donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee

I think someone who has $30K or $60K in disposable income to make a non-charitable cash gift to a political party (and the maximum contribution to a campaign) probably qualifies as “rich” according to VP-elect Biden’s definition of $150K/yr, don’t you?

Comparing donations from an individual who is subject to campaign finance limits to a tax-deductible gift (that may very well have been made as a multi-year pledge as is common in non-profit fundraising, for all we know) is apples and oranges.

I guess only money to Republicans is dirty.

What really gets my goat is that $100 donation from the restauranteur to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign. Now that’s something that needs scrutiny! /sarc

But out of 27 trailers in the park there are 25 donations to the BHO/DNC Joint Victory fund in the amount of 28,500.00 each.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

CommentGuy on January 7, 2009 at 11:30 AM

Wow. Alert the media. Oh wait! They won’t care.

Seriously though, shouldn’t you contact a media heavy weight of conservative bent with this info? It’s all very Norman Hsu…

As for your spreadsheets of voter turnout in Chicago – not sure that I get the point you’re making. Lower turnout, but high percentages for The One. Is there a reason why that can’t our shouldn’t happen?

I looks more like $500K is big money.

I do full analysis of the post data from the elections.

When I am done I have a full database of the vote as far as the available data will let me go. That now allows me to get all the voter results all the way down to the precinct level for the entire country.

After reading a Chicago Trib article on the turnout there something immediately caught my eye.

The wards that are major Black wards in Chicago actually had lower turnout for this election than in prior elections.

Now considering the fact that the elections office figures showed major numbers of new voters for those same precincts it was hard to justify that the actual voter count and turnout was less than in prior years.

The precincts show drop off in turn out , but at the same time they showed a higher percentage of voters for BHO.

Those wards/precincts tend to block vote with near 90% historic trends but this year with even lower turnout the results were up in the 99% plus BHO range.

GWB in his last two elections pulled near 13% in Chicago and Mc pulled in about 11% this time around.

Now if you match up the prior elections data , precincts/wards where GWB pulled 10% or more of the vote ended up pulling vastly lower numbers for Mc.

There are 50 wards in Chicago and each ward contains about 50 or more precincts.

I will link the data below but what you need to notice is that in the major Black precincts their registration was up but total count and percent turnout were both down.

Prior year 90% voting blocks are now off the top of the scale.

There are entire wards of 50 or more precincts where Mc did not even break into double digits for the entire ward.

There are a number of wards for which BHO had 100% of the vote tally in multiple precincts. Zero votes for Mc or even a third party candidate.

Most of the heavy black areas despite lower turnout had BHO votes well above 98% or 99% in the results.

It is split into two spreadsheets due to size limitations on google docs.

First half

Second half

For me this set of results doesn’t even begin to pass the smell test.

There is always Commissioner of Major League Baseball for Richardson.

Mr. Joe on January 7, 2009 at 9:54 AM

Sorry. That’s Condi Rice’s gig if she can’t get the NFL commissioner job.

The campaign said they would provide full disclosure of the donors on the PIC website. They did the first month but since then they converted it to a database and I have tried everything I can to access the data and it is just a no way event now.

They only have two short lists of bundlers and donors available now for access and no way to get to the full donor listings.

They did it right the first month per their promise and I downloaded to a spreadsheet the donations for that month.

It contained a listing of over 1700 donors with a total of 1,170,937.44 in donations.

That listing has since vanished from their website but they now claim a total donation count of over 25 million dollars and have no way I can find to download the list as they initially said they would always make available for access.

You can view the first month donation data online here at google docs.

I also verified the condition of the park,not just from the overhead satellite shot, but it just happens that Google street views also has photos of the trailer park itself that show the low value and semi run down conditions. The only vehicles parked at the trailers were at least 5 or 6 year old second hand looking vehicles.

More digging into the this location showed that the county tax rolls had all these private trailers parked in a rent a spot trailer park had an average tax roll value of under 12,000.00 and the images supported that valuation.

Not enough dollar amounts for the donation related stuff to have done that , it could be lost in the round off error.
CommentGuy on January 7, 2009 at 11:19 AM

Yeah but it was worth a few seconds dream. ;)

A low income area in a north western state in a small little town in the middle of no where.

In that town is a mobile home park with many year old single wide house trailers, as verified by phone book cross checks and a shot of the address from Google Earth and the MS Terra Sever as a backup.

A very low income rural and somewhat run down area , some would say it is a ‘trailer trash’ place.

But out of 27 trailers in the park there are 25 donations to the BHO/DNC Joint Victory fund in the amount of 28,500.00 each.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.