Northwest Philadelphia again topped city voter turnout.

by Brendan Sample

After a close race across the 200th Legislative District of Pennsylvania, local Democratic voters once again chose Chris Rabb as their candidate in the May 15 primary election. Rabb’s 7,855 votes (52.14 percent) beat that of his challenger, Melissa Scott, who garnered 7,208 votes (47.84 percent). With no Republican candidate vying for the position, Rabb is now set to run completely unopposed in November’s general election.

Looking at the results broken down by individual wards, both the 9th and 22nd wards tilted towards Rabb, while the 50th voted in favor of Scott. In the 9th Ward, Rabb won an overwhelming majority with 3,255 votes (82.57 percent) compared to Scott’s 687 votes (17.43 percent). The totals were more indicative of the overall results in the 22nd Ward, with Rabb securing 3,191 votes (59.85 percent) and Scott with 2,140 (40.14 percent). Scott fared much better in the 50th ward, in which she lives and is a committee person, with 4,381 people casting votes for her (75.64 percent) and just 1,409 voting for Rabb (24.33 percent).

Though over 15,000 people came out to vote across the district, turnout numbers were still low, as that figure represents about 33 percent of about 45,000 eligible Democratic voters in the 200th. Approximate turnouts in the race for each ward were 43 percent for the 9th Ward, 35 percent for the 22nd and 32 percent for the 50th. While low by district standards, it was far better than the state-wide average of 18 percent.

In the Third Congressional District, Democrat incumbent Dwight Evans won easily against Kevin Johnson, and will go on to challenge Republican Bryan Lieb, who also ran unopposed for his party’s nomination, in November.

The statewide elections for Governor and U.S. Senator focused on the Republican candidates, as Democrats Tom Wolf and Bob Casey, respectively, ran unopposed. Scott Wagner won the nomination for Governor while Lou Barletta did the same for Senator. Barletta also managed to win both the overall Philadelphia vote as well as the races in the 9th and 22nd Wards, though he tied with Jim Christiana in the 50th.

Despite Wagner’s overall win, he was unable to claim victory in Philadelphia, where Paul Mango edged him out 40.48 to 38.66 percent. Mango did not win any of the local wards, however, as Wagner did win the 22nd and 50th Wards, while Laura Ellsworth took the 9th.

Outside of Philadelphia, in the newly formed Fourth Congressional District in Montgomery County, Democrat Madeleine Dean secured her party’s nomination against Shira Goodman and Joe Hoeffel. Dean tallied 42,625 votes for 72.6 percent, Goodman had 9,645 for 16.4 percent and Hoeffel got 6,431 for 11 percent. Dean will run in the general election when she goes against Republican Dan David, who ran unopposed for his party’s nomination.