Our site now offers some tools to analyze election results. The comments below provide one take on things, written by Brady Hunsaker. We encourage you to take a look at the tools for yourself and share any observations you have.

You call this a strong democracy? Out of 238 single-winner races in Allegheny County, 138 were won with at least 98% of the vote. That's 58% of the races! In every case, of course, there was only one candidate on the ballot. Mostly they were Democrats, but there were a few Republicans. The two-party system fails to provide competitive elections, and yet both parties still support tremendous obstacles for any other candidates to get on the ballot. Is this really in the best interest of voters?

How much support is 99% really? Our new election results spreadsheets show how much support a candidate really has by looking at the abstentions--voters who cast a ballot but not a vote in that race--and registered voters.

For example, Dan Onorato got over 99% of the votes (there were no other candidates), but only 84% of the turnout. Still, 84% is quite strong. Most candidates with 99% of the "vote" were really in the 70-80% range, with some lower. To see for yourself, check our election results spreadsheets. These also allow you to do your own analyses.

Mayor's race. To get a sense of the mayor's vote, first look at this image of the mayoral vote in 2005. In the image, there is a dot for each district. The size of the dot shows the turnout, while the colors show the candidates: blue for O'Connor (Dem), red for Weinroth (Rep), and green for North (Green).

After looking at the 2005 results, take a look at this image of the 2007 results. In this case blue is Ravenstahl, red is DeSantis, and yellow is others. It's clear that DeSantis's strength was primarily in the East End, as if he succeeded in getting votes from both traditional Republican supporters as well as many dissatisfied liberals/progressives.

Straight party voters. My wife suggested looking at the straight party voters. That's shown in this image of straight party votes for Pittsburgh districts. White is no straight-party vote, blue is Democratic, red is Republican, and yellow is others.

Combined with the Mayor's race results, what strikes me most are the neighborhoods of Homewood and the Hill District. Although the turnout is not amazing, these neighborhoods are the most concentrated centers of straight-party Democratic votes and are solidly Democratic overall. A few districts are nearly 100% straight-party Democratic votes! Yet does anyone believe that the elected Democratic leaders are doing much to earn this loyalty?

It seems to me that any effort to end one-party rule in Pittsburgh will need to develop genuine, equitable, and empowering grassroots coalitions with people from these communities.