Friday, March 30, 2012

I don't know what these numbers mean, but I think they must mean something

In a post earlier today I cited to a post on the Illinois Observer. While browsing through that blog, another post also caught my eye. Published on March 14, 2012, the Observer reviewed the top and bottom 10 performing wards in the February 2010 primary. Expressed in terms of registered voters coming to the polls, according to the Observer, the top 10 performing wards in 2010 were:
  1. Matthew O’Shea (19th) – 49.8%
  2. Michael Madigan (13th) – 40.4%
  3. Michael Zalewski (23rd) – 37.8%
  4. Ed Burke (14th) – 35.4%
  5. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) – 34.5%
  6. Michelle Harris (8th) – 33.2%
  7. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) – 30.0%
  8. Derrick Curtis (18th) – 29.6%
  9. Leslie Hairston (5th) – 29.6%
  10. John Daley (11th) – 29.1%
Again, according to the linked Observer post, the bottom 10 vote producers were:
  1. Tony Munoz (12th) – 18.4%
  2. Ed Smith (28th) – 18.2%
  3. John Pope (10th) – 18.1%
  4. Rey Colon (35th) – 17.5%
  5. Roberto Maldonado (26th) – 17.5%
  6. Joann Thompson (16th) – 17.2%
  7. Toni Foulkes (15th) – 16.9%
  8. Jesse Juarez (1st) – 16.0%
  9. Joseph Berrios (31st) – 15.9%
  10. Ariel Reboyras (30th) – 15.2%
This got me wondering.

Were the numbers similar last week?

As it turns out... some were... and some were very different.

The top 10 performing wards on March 20, 2012, in terms of ballots cast, were:
WardVotes Cast
11911,660
2810,303
369,712
4219,417
5348,941
6138,500
748,077
8187,643
977,639
10237,398

The bottom 10 vote producing wards were:
WardVotes Cast
1302,184
2122,195
3332,534
4222,582
5262,697
6162,735
7312,912
8143,087
9153,115
10393,219

3 comments:

David Ormsby said...

Jack,

Unless you use the ratio of the number of registered voters to the number actual voters voting versus raw number of voters per ward, then you will get a significant difference.

David Ormsby

Jack Leyhane said...

David, I will do the additional ciphering and report.

Albert said...

The limited analysis of single-subcircuit voting that I've been able to do (limited by small data sets) found that slating is most powerful in the 3rd. You can see why from these numbers. Wards 13, 18, 19 and 23 are all in the 3rd, and so is part of 14.