History indicates low turnout for primary

Philadelphia's political elite have largely written off Penn students' influence on the upcoming city elections - and they may be right, at least if past elections are any indication.

An analysis of voter turnout in the 27th Ward, the section of the city that includes students who live on campus, shows that Penn students turn out in exceedingly low numbers for elections similar to the one next week.

For example, during the 1999 mayoral primary - a summertime election hotly contested with a plethora of candidates - only 57 voters made it to the polls in the six divisions of the ward where on-campus housing is located.

Worse, the third division, which includes Hill College House and was the area with the highest turnout, 19, includes several apartment buildings that aren't heavily populated by Penn students. Thus, there's no guarantee that even a majority of those 19 voters were affiliated with the University.

In the 18th, 20th, 21st and 22nd divisions, areas where the only residents are Penn students, only 29 people voted.

Turnout was better in the closely fought general election - which took place during the school year - in which 459 total votes were cast in such divisions.

These numbers pale in comparison with turnout in Penn divisions for the 2006 midterm election, in which Republican incumbent Rick Santorum was defeated by Democratic challenger Bob Casey in a race with control of the Senate lying in the balance.

For that election, 1,508 voters made it to the polls.

This would seem to confirm the conventional wisdom - Penn students care more about national politics than city politics and won't vote in an off-year summer election - and also confirms similar notions that political operatives and candidates alike have had for years about Penn students' ability to affect city elections.

Mayoral candidate Tom Knox, for instance, admitted in an earlier interview that his campaign was basically ignoring Penn because its students don't vote.

Likewise, alumnus Andy Toy, running for an at-large Council seat, called University City a virtual "wasteland" when it came to votes in the summer, and Neil Oxman, a political consultant working for Michael Nutter's campaign, predicted candidates would come to Penn for volunteers, but not for votes.

The voting statistics also serve to explain the difficulties that the Penn Democrats faced in registering students to vote for the mayoral election, in which they only registered about 300 students as opposed to the thousands registered to vote against Santorum.

While only around 55 percent of undergraduate students live on campus, Dawn Maglicco, director of Penn's Office of Government and Community Affairs, said this voting trend probably holds true across the entire undergraduate population.

Maglicco, however, noted that other factors may also have played a role in the dramatic increase in Penn voter turnout for the Santorum/Casey matchup.

She cited a change in polling locations from David Rittenhouse Laboratory to locations within each division as a big reason behind the boost.

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