More fun with numbers, this time with percentages

Mr. Ormsby, who generated the 2010 turnout figures that I cited to in the post below, suggested in a comment that I look at percentage turnouts in 2012 if I wanted to really compare to the turnouts he reported -- and it was a good point. Apples should be compared to apples, etc.

I still suspect vote totals are the more important figure, since that determines the 'weighted vote' that committeemen use at slating time. Were primacy based on percentages of registered voters voting as opposed to total votes, back in the days when the first Mayor Daley used to quaintly refer to the suburbs as the 'county towns,' the Chairman of the Barrington Township Democratic Organization might have been the real primus inter pares: He might have turned out only a handful of voters, perhaps family members only, but if they all showed up on election day, he could boast 100% turnout.

It was never thus.

On the other hand, it is interesting to see who did the most they could with what they had -- and, on this basis, it may come as no surprise to see that House Speaker Madigan, facing his first primary challenge in many years, really did pull out all the stops, getting just over 40% of his registered voters out in an election where others where 15 wards got fewer than 15% of their voters to the polls. (Also, taking up Mr. Ormsby's challenge gave me a chance to practice my rudimentary HTML skills.)

Therefore, without further adieu, the top 10 performing wards on March 20, 2012, in terms the percentage of registered Democrats casting ballots (using figures available from the City of Chicago Board of Election Commissioners site) were:

	Ward	Votes Cast	# Reg. Dem. Voters	Percentage voting
1	13	8,500	20,961	40.55%
2	19	11,660	32,312	36.09%
3	4	8,077	24,081	33.54%
4	8	10,303	32,843	31.37%
5	5	7,261	23,721	30.61%
6	6	9,712	32,344	30.03%
7	7	7,639	27,072	28.22%
8	23	7,398	27,775	26.64%
9	3	5,230	19,912	26.27%
10	21	9,417	35,872	26.25%

The bottom 10 performing wards, on the other hand, were:

	Ward	Votes Cast	# Reg. Dem. Voters	Percentage voting
1	30	2,184	19,794	11.03%
2	32	3,525	31,275	11.27%
3	26	2,697	22,029	12.24%
4	33	2,534	18,999	12.24%
5	50	3,245	24,002	13.52%
6	1	3,661	26,893	13.61%
7	39	3,217	23,368	13.77%
8	44	3,880	28,164	13.78%
9	47	4,326	31,128	13.90%
10	43	4,208	29,980	14.04%