Mitt Romney reportedly got 0 votes in 59 Philadelphia districts
theGRIO REPORT - Fifty-nine of the city's voting districts came up with results that if proven to be without fault, are outstanding...
U.S. cities are usually bursting with Democrats. Politically homogeneous, most big cities have 75 to 80 percent of its residents identifying with President Barack Obama’s party.
Still, what happened in some Philadelphia districts on Election Day was incredible.
Fifty-nine of the city’s voting districts came up with results that, if proven to be without fault, are outstanding. They reported that not a single person voted for GOP candidate Mitt Romney. Zero.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the unofficial vote tallies for President Obama at 19,605 to Mitt Romney’s nil.
“We have always had these dense urban corridors that are extremely Democratic,” said Stanford University political science professor Jonathan Rodden told Philly.com, “It’s kind of an urban fact, and you are looking at the extreme end of it in Philadelphia.”
The unanimous support for Obama was clustered in the predominantly black neighborhoods of West and North Philadelphia. Though a big win, the result can be used as fodder for voter fraud conspiracy theorists.
Steve Miskin, a spokesman for Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives brought up his party’s voter ID initiative when he heard about the results.
“We believe we need to continue ensuring the integrity of the ballot,” he said.
“I’d be surprised if there weren’t a handful of precincts that didn’t cast a vote for Romney, but the number of zero precincts in Philadelphia deserves examination,” said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who has studied African-American precincts.
“Not a single vote for Romney or even an error? That’s worth looking into,” he said.
In many of the wards, not only were votes for Romney missing, but Republicans were generally AWOL. The City Board of Elections claimed some registered voters were Republicans. But when asked by the Inquirer, they said they were Democrats.
James Norris, 19, is listed as a Republican, but claims to be a Democrat. Another voter, Eric Sapp, 42, was surprised to hear that the city listed him as a Republican. Both voted for President Obama.
“I got to check on that,” Sapp told the Inquirer.
This result isn’t the first time that the Democrat candidate has won so overwhelmingly in a Philadelphia precinct. George W. Bush came out with no votes in five divisions in 2004, and in 2008, McCain didn’t get a single vote in 57 divisions.
Follow Similoluwa Ojurongbe on Twitter and simioju.com
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