Recurring membership charges will reflect the stated price of basic membership or Super Citizen membership at time of renewal. These charts show the growth in each Voting Bloc’s historical share of the vote over the last decade:Īll memberships to The Philadelphia Citizen are renewed annually. The primary is broken into two parts because of the large number of candidates on the ballot. This chart shows the percentage of each Voting Bloc that was won by each of the At-Large City Council candidates in the May primary and November general elections. (Note, however, that the further back you go, the less precise the results will be given the demographic shifts that have taken place in many divisions.)

Using the Ward Portal it’s now possible to view all past elections and candidates through this lens, and form a better understanding of where different politicians’ support comes from. Here is an example from Tannen’s post-election wrap post showing where Kendra Brooks’s votes came from in terms of these voting blocs, and the different share of the electorate that each group comprised: Obviously these don’t capture all of the nuances of the political and demographic splits in Philadelphia politics, but they do go a long way toward revealing some of the citywide voting coalitions that exist across neighborhoods. Tannen’s novel contribution was to group the divisions (precincts) that tend to vote most similarly, and group them into four clusters: Black Voters, White Moderates, Wealthy Progressives, and Hispanic North Philly. Watch this space for more on state and City Council redistricting, starting right after the 2020 Census data release.THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF A CONTENT PARTNERSHIP WITH: Information like this will figure in a big way when it’s time to talk City Council redistricting and state redistricting, as lawmakers try to find ways to inoculate themselves against these voting bloc boundary changes by shedding divisions from voting blocs more likely to support a challenger. Notice that this is not directly applicable to people this is all traits of divisions. White Moderate and Hispanic Voter shares have seen a steady decline since 2002. Wealthy Progressive share took a clear leap in 2017 and after. With the moving boundaries, the changes in Blocs’ share of the vote is even starker than before.īlack Voters have seen an increasing share of the turnout since 2002, though that’s somewhat mitigated by changes since 2016. In the maps above, you can clearly see the expansion of the Wealthy Progressive divisions outward from Center City, and growth of the Black Voter divisions in North and West Philly, along with a shift in the Hispanic Voter divisions eastward and up into the lower Northeast. Read the post for some insights on the ways in which these boundaries have shifted, as well as some of the candidate groupings as they relate to some of the different political and demographic axes in Philadelphia elections.Īccording to Tannen, the introduction of voting bloc boundary changes makes certain developments we’ve known about appear much more pronounced than previously thought, including the rising Black share of the primary vote in elections since 2002, and the 2017 level-jump for Wealthy Progressive divisions after that bloc first surpassed the White Moderate divisions’ vote share in 2015.

This week Jonathan Tannen of SSW wrote about a new dimension he is introducing into his 4-part classification system of Black Voters, White Moderates, Wealthy Progressives, and Hispanic Voters, which is a shift in demographic boundaries over time. What’s most interesting about this is that, especially when it comes to Democratic primaries, there are some clear “parties” within the party that have some pretty clear candidate preferences over time, and knowing the exact divisions where those sub-parties tend to be strongest is very useful election information.

One of the more interesting features of the Sixty-Six Wards data portal is the attempt to quantify Philadelphia’s different voting blocs, which for these purposes are divisions-not people-that tend to prefer the same groupings of candidates across elections. (Image: Jonathan Tannen, Sixty-Six Wards)

Blocs philadelphia