elections

What Tuesday’s Election Could Tell Us About Philadelphia’s Political Future

November 4, 2022 / Comments Off on What Tuesday’s Election Could Tell Us About Philadelphia’s Political Future

Post updated November 15 with new unofficial election data from the 2022 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, as well as an analysis at the bottom of the post.  The most recent presidential election found Philadelphia at the center of the American political universe. For days after the election, the nation’s attention was glued to the […]

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The Effect of Handing out Candidate Listings at Polling Places

July 7, 2017 / Comments Off on The Effect of Handing out Candidate Listings at Polling Places

In this Present Value post, ESI analyzes the effect of handing out listings of candidate recommendations outside of polling places, using work from May’s Philadelphia Municipal Primary done in conjunction with the Philadelphia Bar Association. The full working paper can be downloaded here.  Leading up to Philadelphia’s Municipal Primary in May, we talked a lot […]

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Mapping the Results of the 2017 Primary Election

May 17, 2017 / Comments Off on Mapping the Results of the 2017 Primary Election

ESI Director Jonathan Tannen simulated his predictions for the outcomes of the 2017 Philadelphia Primary Election in Present Value last week. Now the results are in. Below are the maps Jonathan generated once the votes were tallied. Thank you to those who joined us the night of the election, both live and in the Twittersphere! At […]

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Simulating the Court of Common Pleas Election

May 12, 2017 / Comments Off on Simulating the Court of Common Pleas Election

The 2017 Philadelphia Primary election is May 16th. In prior posts, we’ve looked into the dynamics of an often-overlooked race: judges for the Court of Common Pleas. In a few short days, voters will elect judges to serve ten-year terms in the state court with broad jurisdiction over Civil and Criminal trials, Family Court, and […]

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The Dimensions of Philadelphia’s Democratic Primaries

March 10, 2017 / Comments Off on The Dimensions of Philadelphia’s Democratic Primaries

Elections can be challenging to model. Philadelphia, in a Democratic primary, has 66 wards, over 100 candidates, and thousands of issues. And wards, candidates, and issues don’t exactly wear signs that declare what “type” they are. We broadly talk about “party” candidates, “reform” candidates, “machine” candidates, but how can we identify them, and know that those […]

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Examining Philly’s Voter Turnout

January 27, 2017 / Comments Off on Examining Philly’s Voter Turnout

Local Elections and Turnout The 2017 Philadelphia primaries are now mere months away. So far in this space, I’ve examined the role of randomized ballot position for the city as a whole and within wards. Today, let’s focus on election turnout. Increasing turnout A candidate’s total number of votes is the product of the total […]

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