Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Fun Fact: South Side Irish 19th Ward Cast Most Ballots for Willie Wilson

By Mark Konkol | March 16, 2016 4:11pm
 The 19th Ward, home of the South Side Irish Parade, gave Democratic presidential candidate Willie Wilson more votes than in any other ward on Election Day.
The 19th Ward, home of the South Side Irish Parade, gave Democratic presidential candidate Willie Wilson more votes than in any other ward on Election Day.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo

CHICAGO — Now that the primary election big picture is fully in focus, political junkies start to dig deep into election details, searching for meaning in unofficial vote totals.

There are plenty of footnotes to find in the primary election results that might highlight changes in voter demographics and political ideology brewing in certain Chicago neighborhoods.   

RELATED: CHICAGO PRIMARY ELECTION RESULTS (MAP)

Here are few fun facts to keep the political conversation going on St. Patrick's Day.

Possibly the biggest surprises came out of the 19th Ward, a South Side Irish stronghold packed with cops, firefighters and city workers, including:

• Willie Wilson’s run for president (yes, of the United States of America) got its biggest vote total in the city in the 19th Ward. (Granted, Wilson won just 186 votes, but that was more votes than he got in heavily African-American wards.)

• The number of voters who pulled Republican ballots in the 19th jumped by 121 percent compared to the 2012 primary. Trump won 52 percent of the vote.

Some of Chicago’s veteran Democratic power brokers representing parts of town with historically strong ties to the Clintons didn’t come through for Hillary on Tuesday:

• Sen. Bernie Sanders stomped Clinton in Ald. Ed Burke’s increasingly Hispanic 14th Ward by nearly 17 percentage points with 58 percent of the vote.

• Sanders also won in working-class neighborhoods near Midway Airport, including more than 50 percent in Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s 13th Ward. Also, Sanders got 55 percent of the vote in Ald. Michael Zalewski’s 23rd Ward.

• The Daley family, longtime Clinton supporters, still wield hefty influence in the 11th Ward, now controlled by former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew, Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson. Still, Sanders beat Clinton by an 11 percentage point margin in a ward that seems to have become a destination in Chicago's Great Hipster Migration.

• In the 33rd Ward controlled by longtime Democratic Committeeman Dick Mell, who appeared poised to lose that post Tuesday after a 40-year run, Sanders beat Clinton with 60 percent of the vote.

• And down in Ald. Matt O’Shea’s 19th Ward — where the number of Republicans ballots more than doubled and those 186 people voted for Wilson — Sanders got nearly 50 percent of the vote for the win.