Turnout Is Key on the Streets of Philadelphia
Philadelphia
They called me in the morning, and then again at lunchtime. They called at 2 and at 4, and again at 5:30. Then they called once more at 7. And they came down my street at dawn and dusk, and several times in between—each time armed with more megaphones, sirens, and music.
The date was Nov. 7, 2000. I was living in an old apartment building on North 63rd Street in Philadelphia.
They were turning out the vote for Al Gore.
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In the end, the Democrats’ election-day effort in Philadelphia had an enormous impact on the state’s overall tally, and Gore prevailed in electoral-rich Pennsylvania by more than 200,000 votes. Despite that success, though, statistical evidence suggests that there still may be significant room for improvement with regard to getting out the vote in this city—which has been a machine-powered Democratic stronghold for decades; while 53.9 percent of Philadelphia’s registered voters cast ballots in 2000, 72.9 percent participated in the election that sent Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992.
For this year’s race, most recent polls in Pennsylvania show a slight lead for President Bush over John Kerry. However, a 1992-like turnout in Philadelphia would almost certainly tip the scales for Kerry, and the Democratic get-out-the-vote campaign—from intensive registration efforts to nonstop canvassing and phone-banking—has been as active as ever.
Adam Clymer, the political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey, noted in an interview that most heavily reported polls, because they measure only the responses of likely voters, can be significantly off track when projecting results for elections characterized by especially high turnout. “One thing the likely voter polls all have in common is that they rely importantly on claimed past votes,” he said. “So if this year’s election produces a substantially higher turnout, reliance on past vote would be less valuable and less predictive.” In other words, the projected votes of those who chose not to cast ballots in 1996 and 2000 but plan to vote in November don’t really show up in the polls.
Taken together, these two points—that Philadelphia could see an especially high turnout on Nov. 2, and that polling could be seriously errant in places with especially high turnout—translate into a serious possibility that Kerry, despite the current projections, may have a crucial hidden advantage in Pennsylvania. This scenario, of course, depends heavily on widespread dissatisfaction in Philadelphia with the Bush administration and its view of the future. But fortunately for Kerry, that piece of the puzzle has already come together. The people of Philadelphia actually seem to have a genuinely potent distaste for the Republican Party as a whole, and in particular, for President Bush himself.
Nothing could have expressed that sentiment more concretely than last year’s mayoral election, which pitted a struggling Democratic mayor, John Street, against Republican Sam Katz, a formidable, well-liked opponent. In that race, Katz lost his lead in the polls a few weeks prior to the election almost entirely because Philadelphia voters felt the Bush administration had a hand in the campaign—specifically through an incident stemming from a federal investigation involving Street. As Jerome Maddox, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “The voters basically decided, ‘We don’t want to give any signal that we like Bush, and so we’re not going to vote for Katz.’” And so it went: Street trounced his Republican challenger and is now rallying his people to the polls for Kerry.
Although it does speak volumes about the political climate of Philadelphia, the federal probe incident has been, by no means, the lone Democratic rallying cry in this city during the past few years. In fact, there really isn’t one single, profound reason that Philadelphia voters have no love for the GOP, but they do have a lengthy laundry list of gripes.
They don’t like it that Bush pushed tax cuts for the wealthy over social spending, which affected many Philadelphia residents personally. They don’t like it that conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh made racist comments about their quarterback. They don’t like it that the Republicans held their convention in the city in 2000 and never stepped outside the arena. And they certainly don’t like it that Rick Santorum, the archconservative U.S. senator, represents the state they live in. In short, they just don’t like the idea of voting for President Bush—or any candidate like him, for that matter—and given the stakes and tightness of this year’s election, it’s hard to imagine that they would pass up an opportunity to oust him.
Of course, the Republicans, currently running their own extensive get-out-the-vote campaign, could still pull out Pennsylvania. But the point is that the polls and projections coming out of the Keystone State, which generally show Kerry trailing, are statistically inaccurate if voter turnout in Philadelphia is high.
Maddox, the University of Pennsylvania professor, confidently asserted that the polls could be off target on account of the turnout factor in Philadelphia. “If you look at polling in Pennsylvania, the polls [that show Bush with a slight lead] tend to only have likely voters,” he said. Then, noting the get-out-the-vote efforts in Philadelphia, he added, “I’ve been adjusting them a few points upward for Kerry and a few points downward for Bush.”
Even if just 60 percent of this city’s registered voters turn out on election day—a percentage higher than 2000 but significantly lower than 1992—the predictive value of the current statewide polls would be severely diminished. So in the prospect of high turnout in Philadelphia, Kerry could have a hidden advantage in the state of Pennsylvania—an advantage the pre-election polls simply cannot measure accurately.
