Philly’s indie turnout tracker crashes on what could be a record-breaking Election Day

This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism with lead support from the William Penn Foundation, and additional funding from Lenfest, Comcast NBC Universal, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation and Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.

There’s the potential for 2024 to be a record-breaking year for election turnout in Philly.

While we won’t know for sure until after the polls close, data analysis blog Sixty-Six Wards is tracking self-reported voter turnout — as it has reliably done for the past six years. 

With anecdotal evidence so far backing up high local turnout, the developer behind Sixty-Six Wards, Jonathan Tannen, confirmed that the tracker crashed on Tuesday afternoon. He pivoted to GitHub in the meantime, with hours left to go until polls close. 

Tannen asks participants to fill out the voter tracker form on the site with their voter number, division, ward, how they voted and what time of day they voted. He tracks this data along with historic voter data to estimate voter turnout. 

657 voters in 61 wards had filled out the Sixty-Six Wards voter turnout tracker as of 2:57 p.m. on Tuesday. The tracker estimated 480,954 people voted across the city at that time and 178,202 mail-in ballots were returned as of Sunday. 

Already, voter turnout would be more than double the turnout from the primary in April, with only 183,538, or 17.7% of registered voters participating at the time, Billy Penn reported. Sixty-Six Ward estimated about 213,000 votes at the time. 

The Philadelphia City Commissioners Office, which organizes all local elections, reports that there are 1,117,680 registered voters in the city. The City Commissioners track voter turnout by ward, and will eventually report total voter turnout after the election. 

Tracking turnout based on self-reported data

Urban demographer Jonathan Tannen founded Sixty-Six Wards in 2018 to help people understand the bigger picture with voter data.  

“Estimating turnout live requires simultaneously estimating two things: each division’s relative mobilization and the time pattern of voters throughout the day,” Tannen wrote in a blog post in 2018 explaining the tracker’s model and methodology. 

Tannen keeps up to date with his estimations and how accurate he is on his X account. The tracker bounced on and offline on Election Day, as hundreds of residents reached out to the blogger to record their votes. 

Voter turnout for the 2020 presidential election was the highest since 1984, with 749,317 votes cast across in-person and mail-in ballots, according to WHYY. That’s about 66% of registered voters in the city. 

When it comes to in-person votes, the tracker estimated 285,000 votes that cycle, but there were actually 360,000. Tannen discussed what mistakes he made in a blog post, explaining that his errors included underestimating the usage of mail-in ballots. 

An estimated 493,500 voters participated in the 2022 midterm election, which is 46% of registered voters in the city. This was the second-highest voter turnout for a midterm election in the last 30 years, according to Billy Penn. 

Social media reports of long lines at polling places

With Pennsylvania being one of the most important swing states, both campaigns have been encouraging voters to show up on Election Day — and they have.

Philadelphians tweeted about long lines wrapped around polling places, particularly in North Philly at Temple University. 

“The line to vote must be half a mile long to vote at a precinct with 7 voting machines. This is near Temple University. The entire line is College age kids,” one user said. 

Voter turnout was strong in Northeast Philly, too, with a line of voters at George Washington High School before the polls opened, reported WHYY. Voters also lined up in Northwest sections of the city like Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy, according to Insider NJ. 

These neighborhoods tend to have extremely high turnout rates, according to the Philadelphia Citizen. Pennsylvania has a high amount of electoral votes and the candidate who secures Pennsylvania often wins the race, according to US News and World Report.