Grab four of your friends. Make sure you grab one you don’t like too much. Saw your not-so-great friend at chest level. Take the top quarter of your now very angry friend along with one other friend. Send the other two friends home with the half-torso and legs.
What are you left with? A very graphic representation of voter turnout in Hillsborough County for this year’s mid-term elections.
According to unofficial results from the Florida Secretary of State, 45.3% of Hillsborough voters showed up at the polls early or on Tuesday. With the exception of Leon County (Tallahassee) and Pinellas (St. Petersburg), Hillsborough was tops in the state for counties housing Florida’s ten biggest cities.
This turnout could certainly be explained by the fact that half of the candidates for statewide office hailed from the Tampa Bay area.
Then again Hillsborough ranked last in turnout when compared to the other counties in the Bay area. Hillsborough was the only Bay area county to rank below the statewide average of 46.4%.
What does all of this tell us? Probably not a lot.
We do at least stand strong when compared to national voter turnout, which was estimated at 40.4%. That particular statistic may be a symptom of Tampa/St. Pete ranking number one in the nation in political television advertising. That’s a ranking I’m sure most of us could have done without.
Here are the unofficial voter turnout results for Bay area counties (registered voters/turnout = percentage):
Smitty
3 years ago
How interesting that Manatee and Sarasote had turnout well above the average. They had that hot district 13 race, of course, and one would assume looking at the numbers that it was probably that very close and very nasty race that spiked the turnout. And yet we’re told 18000 voters didn’t bother to cast ballots in that race but did vote in lesser known races farther down the ballot. Hmm.
What’s happened recently in that district, anyone? I haven’t seen anything about it on the news out here (cough choke).