"There's a very disturbing bigger picture here, however: the precincts with the best turnout tend to be wealthy and white, while those with the worst turnout are poor and black. No es bueno para la democracia, señores."Miami New Times gave us credit in the article. Thank you for the shout-out and building on our research in such a constructive way. Miami New Times says:
"But it's hard not to conclude that race and income aren't also heavy factors in who votes here in South Florida."I agree. Even though faced with the potential of the first African American U.S. President losing, the African Americans in lower income areas did not vote in high numbers: Is it voter suppression by income? I saw the same trends in the 2008 election (see comments for numbers) when Obama was first elected. What can be done to help minorities vote in greater numbers? If a minority president couldn't do it, what can?
On another note, Romney says Obama won with "gifts" to certain voters. Well the voting numbers by precinct in Miami Dade County don't support that Mitt. Try again.
Do your own votting research.
19 comments:
how on earth are voters being suppressed by income? unemployed people have all day long to vote.
Do you see my question mark. Something is at work and I don't think it is that people are unemployed and lazy. If you are making minimum wage or working two jobs is it harder to get time to vote or is voting just a lower priority? If that is the case why register to vote at all? Miami New Times Miller postulates that the voter picture ID requirement could be the culprit but I did look at 2008 results and did see the same trends.
2012 Results for Coral Gables and nearby areas:
607 Coral Gables 910, 80.55%
608 Coral Gables 2,036, 80.60%
611 Coral Gables 976, 83.81%
612 Coral Gables 1,370 69.05%
615 Coral Gables 1,582, 83.69%
616 Pinecrest 1,408, 80.40%
617 Coral Gables 3,259 79.29%
618 Coral Gables 738, 86.59%
619 Unincorporated 789, 82.13%
621 South Miami 2,427, 75,32%
624 Pinecrest 467, 79.44%
626 Coral Gables 571, 83.01%
630 Pinecrest 1,623, 80.28%
633 Coral Gables 1,743, 80.03%
Here are the 2008 numbers for Coral Gables and nearby areas:
607 737 917 80.37 %
608 1,604 1,968 81.50 %
611 782 920 85.00 %
612 1,070 1,191 89.84 %
613 1,222 1,514 80.71 %
Precinct Ballots Cast Registered Voters Voter Turnout
614 913 1,122 81.37 %
615 1,033 1,595 64.76 %
616 1,092 1,354 80.65 %
617 2,523 3,132 80.56 %
618 611 728 83.93 %
619 661 792 83.46 %
620 769 1,026 74.95 %
621 1,978 2,859 69.19 %
622 625 765 81.70 %
623 359 412 87.14 %
624 357 441 80.95 %
625 1,237 1,585 78.04 %
626 506 585 86.50 %
627 1,121 1,458 76.89 %
628 1,013 1,219 83.10 %
630 1,272 1,551 82.01 %
631 641 785 81.66 %
632 1,707 2,096 81.44 %
633 1,291 1,711 75.45 %
2012, what happened in precinct 612 and 615????:
-----------------
2012:
265 Opa Locka 496, 64.52%
276 Miami Gardens 570, 58.07%
280 Opa Locka 512, 51.81%
907 Homestead 3,971, 55.88%
911 Unincorporated 1,873, 45.97%
916 Homestead 1421, 45.53%
919 Homestead 5,654, 57.62%
922 Florida City 3,135, 58.18%
923 Florida City 293, 50.85%
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2008 (compare the precinct Numbers above)
Precinct Ballots Cast Registered Voters Voter Turnout
260 716 1,466 48.84 %
261 1,570 2,400 65.42 %
262 1,275 2,199 57.98 %
263 1,142 1,841 62.03 %
264 1,026 1,735 59.14 %
265 256 437 58.58 %
276 326 509 64.05 %
277 21 27 77.78 %
278 104 187 55.61 %
279 33 67 49.25 %
280 361 592 60.98 %
907 2,112 3,216 65.67 %
911 857 1,724 49.71 %
916 647 1,354 47.78 %
917 162 295 54.92 %
918 786 1,574 49.94 %
919 3,057 4,547 67.23 %
920 805 1,623 49.60 %
921 314 552 56.88 %
922 1,804 3,340 54.01 %
923 112 179 62.57 %
If whites turned out in the more affluent areas with such a high percentage why are you not suspicious of vote fraud or ballot tampering?
I recognize there are more financially challenged areas than affluent but these results if taken through the entire state point to something more sinister at play. Basically the numbers don't add up.
I'm sure Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania show the same patterns.
So you say people in Florida City, Homestead, and Opa Locka are financially challenged? Stereotype much?
Read the miami new Times article last commenter. They had average salaries of all the areas in the article. Look before you accuse. Links are there for a reason. I am taking it for granted that you read the article. You obviously didn't. Putz.
Then don't include the per capita income when your point fails.
Sigh. Why don't you be positive instead of nitpicking? Just look at the data and tell me what you think. If you don't like the data, do your own. I don't care. I don't get paid, I spent a lot of hours doing the research I did. Be part of the answer not another fucking Monday morning quarterback. It is after an election and the data is saying many areas where blacks live, the voting was at a lower percentage than where whites live. New Times analyzed the average salaries in those precincts.
How can we improve upon the situation? Is it worth changing? Can we change it? Knowing it exists is half the battle. Offer something better than what you are offering...it doesn't help anything. If you don't like the way I do research, don't read my blogs. There are other places for you. My goal is to have more people vote. What is yours?
I think all the foreclosures in Homestead and Florida City is causing people not to vote. I think many people registered in both these places moved to other places where there are jobs. Yes economics does cause people to vote less. If you have trouble getting a job you have to move to a cheaper place.
Suppression, Recession, Repression, Regression,Obsession, . I have had it with all the "ssions" this election season.
A qoute attributed to "Umcle" Joe Stalin says
"It doesn't matter who votes, only matters who counts the votes."
Your endorsed candidate won stop complaining.
Romney can't get over his loss.
As a teacher, I was taught that the cycle of poverty is broken by education. People with money have the time to research issues or seek out information, while people without money live on a day to day basis of just trying to feed and clothe their children. While wealthy people are helping the kids with the homework and sending them to the best schools, poor parents literally turn their kids over to the school system and hope for the best. The school grading system is more reflective of the socioeconomic make-up of the school than anything else.
When you live in a situation where you are working 2 jobs to feed your loved ones, your first priority is not to stand in line for 3 or more hours to vote. The ballot itself made them feel stupid. 10 pages! With the suppression already caused by their economic situation, I'm sure that ballot made them feel as if they were not "smart enough" to vote since they couldn't figure out what it said.
What I found most depressing about the whole election was this: Rich or poor, young or old, Republican or Democrat, there are very few people that know who the Koch Brothers are. Ask 10 random people today if they know who the Koch Brothers are, and I'm willing to bet that maybe, if you are lucky, you will get 2 that have even heard of them. Yet these guys are pulling the strings in Tallahassee. They are polluting our beautiful state with no restrictions. They are slowly taking over our universities. These are the guys we really need to stop.
As we start our journey to get rid of Rick Scott, we must also take it upon ourselves to education the people in our state about the Koch Brothers.
Genius; make sure you have all the Hoestead precincts. You are missing at the very least 915, 920, 936... some of the polling places may cover more than just Homestead such as the Stadium which serves a portion of Leisure City. Just sayin....
St Martin de Porres is NOT in the city limits
I copied my information DIRECTLY from the Elections website. I was only looking at high performing and low performing precincts NOT ALL precincts in any one area. There are a lot for Coral Gables because they had a lot of high percentages. It was supposed to be a snapshot around the County. Do your own research:
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/FL/Dade/42008/111785/en/summary.html
Thanks Genius for all your research. It was informative and allowed us to watch everything closely as it unfolded in real time. Now the new data is in and there will be four years of analysis.
I think poster who talked about Education had it right. I would think there's a correlation between income and education and this could be reason certain incomes didn't turn out.
Also, as teacher stated, how do you fill out a 10 page ballot if you have a low reading level? Most educated adults I know thought the ballot was confusing and we had the advantage of being able to read it.
Also, with so much of the emphasis in this campaign on the 'middle-class,' is it possible that those in the lower class felt even further disenfranchised? As in: they gave up on us, they'll give us basic necessities, but after that we don't really matter.
Thank you Genius for starting this whole dialogue. I think it is an issue of income and education. Re income - if you work at a low wage job in one part of the county and commute from another, even if your boss is generous and gives you 2 hours it is not likely to be enough. If we really wanted to see high turnout - election day would be a national holiday. I also simply don't believe that technology could not be employed to allow voters to use a precinct that may be closer to work than to home. It may not be consious suppression - but it still no accident that voter participation varies by income and education. We could - and should - do sooo much better.
I did a quick google scholar search and it seems that academic studies show a general correlation between income and voting patterns - lower the income, less tendency to vote. No consensus on reasons, but Yale Professor Rosenstone seems to reflect a majority when he wrote that when people suffer economic adversity, scarce resources are spent on "keeping body and soul together, not on remote concerns like politics." He writes that poverty both increases the opportunity costs of political participation, and reduces capacity to attend to politics. Sadly, it seems that Miami's statistics are consistent with historical trends.
I did a quick Google scholar search and it seems that academic studies show a general correlation between income and voting patterns - lower the income, less tendency to vote. No consensus on reasons, but Yale Professor Rosenstone seems to reflect a majority when he wrote that when people suffer economic adversity, scarce resources are spent on "keeping body and soul together, not on remote concerns like politics." He writes that poverty both increases the opportunity costs of political participation, and reduces capacity to attend to politics. Sadly, it seems that Miami's statistics are consistent with historical trends.
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