WEEK 4:

Philadelphia vs. Washington

We lost a heartbreaker on Sunday in the nation’s capitol. Diving into the numbers, I was gratified to see that we have a lower crime rate than DC, but  I was particularly bummed to see that they beat us by an almost 2-to-1 ratio in terms of voter turnout. That’s something that’s in our control to turn around. Given that, like Philly, DC is pretty much a one-party (Democrat) town, I wondered what could explain this disparity.

Of course, higher education levels are almost always associated with a greater likelihood of voting and, as you can see, over half of DC’s citizens hold B.A. degrees—more than twice as many as Philly.

But Prof. Richardson Dilworth of Drexel’s Center for Public Policy says that only explains part of the story. “A higher proportion of the workforce in DC is employed by government than in Philadelphia, and many studies have consistently found that government employees vote at higher rates than people in the private sector, and in fact many of those in the DC private sector sort of work for the government in the sense that they work in government-related industries such as lobbying,” he explains. “Also, comparing our 2011 general election to the 2014 DC general election is a little unfair. The 2011 general election in Philadelphia featured an incumbent everyone expected to win. There was no incumbent in last year’s DC election, so on that basis alone we’d expect turnout to be higher.”

Add into the mix the fact that what Dilworth refers to as “high salience” issues were on the 2014 DC ballot—questions having to do with gay rights and marijuana legalization, for example—and it’s not surprising that the nation’s capitol voting percentage was elevated. Still, that’s not an excuse for our own lack of turnout. Come election day, we all need to do better. Do your part by going out to the polls on November 3.

Next week, we take on the New Orleans Saints.