As Philly residents waited in long lines to vote early Tuesday, Democratic party officials pointed to the apparent enthusiasm for voting as a good sign for their candidates.
“Voter turnout is extremely high,” Bob Brady, the chair of the party in the city, told reporters. “I’ve been doing elections for 50 years and I’ve been chairman for 40 years and right now it’s the highest we’ve ever seen for this point in time. A high turnout is great for us.”
“Lines everywhere I went,” Mayor Cherelle L. Parker told the Inquirer.
“Kind of extra high turnout in the early part of the day, particularly here in Philly,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said.
As it turns out, not only were hopes for Democratic victories badly misplaced, but so were observations that Philadelphians were eager to vote.
The City Commissioners said Wednesday that turnout had only reached 62.9%, with a small number of votes still to be tallied. About 703,000 of the city’s 1.12 million registered voters went to the polls or sent in a mail ballot.
That’s 46,000 fewer than voted in 2020, during the pandemic, when 66% of registered Philadelphians voted. It’s also lower than during Donald Trump’s previous win, in 2016, when 64% — about 31,000 more than this year — turned out.
Kamala Harris has received just under 548,000 votes in Philly, compared to the 604,000 Joe Biden got four years ago.
This year’s turnout figures will change as some outstanding votes are counted. The Commissioners still need to process provisional ballots, which accounted for 2% of ballots in 2020, and they haven’t yet released a detailed breakout of data that will shed more light on who voted.
But the numbers available so far show that, when it comes to voting, Philly seems to be out of sync with the rest of Pennsylvania — which had turnout relatively close to the 2020 figure — and with the U.S. as a whole.
Apathy, disgust with ads, and poor candidates
Turnout in Philly has been falling for many decades, possibly due to factors like the changing media environment and the declining importance of ward leaders, who in past generations both helped residents access city services and organized them to vote.
But worries about a new and deeper dip grew after the primary this past May, which saw fewer than 18% of registered voters cast a ballot, compared to 32% in the 2020 primary and 40% in 2016.
Looking ahead to the November general election, “we had been anticipating lower turnout than we saw in 2020 or at least similar turnout,” said Lauren Cristella, president of the Philadelphia-based good government group Committee of Seventy.
“I did not think that we were going to have record-breaking turnout just because of how close the polls were, the number of undecided voters that maybe decided to just stay home, and then some of the apathy we were hearing from different demographics across the city,” she said. “We were worried about younger voters and Latino voters,” among others.
The poor participation may in part reflect a growing distaste toward the era’s combative politics generally, especially in a pivotal swing state where voters were bombarded with constant TV and online ads, texts, calls, and surveys.
In a Muhlenberg College health study in the spring, 43% of Pennsylvania residents surveyed said politics and current events were “a major source of stress in their lives,” far more than things like personal finances and work.
“People were disgusted with the ads and were totally over it on that side of things,” Cristella said. “I don’t know if people were wild about either of their choices, and there’s just a general sense of negativity towards government and what it can do, and why voting matters.”
Declining mail voting a possible factor
Yet in others parts of Pennsylvania and the U.S., turnout was relatively high despite those broad anti-politics vibes. Statewide, 68.8% of registered voters cast a vote in the Nov. 5 election, according to a preliminary analysis by the Washington Post. That’s just 1% less than four years earlier.
Nationally, turnout was reportedly 65% this week, a bit lower than 2020 but the second-highest figure since the 1950s.
A number of reasons have been suggested for Philadelphia’s recent down trend. They include a calcified political culture run by a Democratic machine that picks winners in advance for local races, aging political leaders who are hostile to progressives and newcomers, weak get-out-the-vote efforts by local, state, and national campaigns, and a concentration of lower-income residents of color who tend to be less politically engaged.
Cristella also pointed to declining use of mail ballots in the city as a possible factor this year.
She said, for example, that it appears that fewer college students requested mail ballots, although that’s unclear pending the release of more detailed data. She also said many people seem to have not mailed back their ballots in time, or at all. The ballots had to arrive at the Board of Elections office by 8 p.m. on Tuesday, and postmarks didn’t count.
The rate of mail voting in Philly had already fallen between 2020, when COVID worries kept many people from venturing to the polls, and 2022, when the waning of the pandemic apparently contributed to a renewed enthusiasm for in-person voting.
Figures this week from the City Commissioner show a continuing shift. This week, a little more than 505,000 voters went to the polls — which may help explain those long lines at polling places — and only about 172,000 voted by mail. Only 78% of Philadelphians who requested mail ballots actually sent them in, compared to 86% for requesters statewide, according to Department of State data from Tuesday evening.
By comparison, in the 2020 general election, the two voting modes were almost evenly balanced. There were about 375,000 ballots cast at polling places in Philly (including 15,000 provisionals) and 374,000 cast by mail.
Cristella noted that thousands of Philly mail ballots also don’t get counted every presidential election because people making mistakes when sealing them up or there’s a problem delivering them to voters.
She called for Pennsylvania to institute in-person early voting, where people can go into election offices over a couple weeks in late October and vote on a machine, as is done in Delaware, New Jersey, and other states. That could encourage voters by providing them with an additional option, and result in fewer uncountable ballots.
“We really should be pushing for early voting on machines,” she said. “Because you don’t make errors on the machines, right? You have a chance to fix them, check them and all that.”
