Just 27 percent of Philly’s registered voters turn out for primary

 Voting at the GW Childs Elementary polling place in South Philadelphia on Primary Election Day 2015. (Brad Larrison/for NewsWorks)

Voting at the GW Childs Elementary polling place in South Philadelphia on Primary Election Day 2015. (Brad Larrison/for NewsWorks)

Philadelphia mayoral candidate Jim Kenney won Tuesday night’s all-important Democratic primary in a historic landslide. Voter turnout, though, was not nearly as impressive.

Kenney won the Democratic primary by 30 percentage points.

Voter turnout in Philadelphia was roughly 27 percent.

That’s better than some suburban counties, say Bucks County’s 9.5 percent or Montgomery County’s 13.9 percent, but still dismal for the city during a big election, analysts say.

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“It’s better for the citizens when we have a healthy participation in this process, and 27 percent is just not cutting it. Higher turnout opens up the process, gives many more angles for new candidates or new ideas to surface,” said David Thornburgh, who heads the Committee of Seventy, a government watchdog group.

“It just puts a lot more energy and possibility in the process.”

In 2007, the last hotly contested mayoral primary, turnout was 39 percent.

In a city that bleeds blue, the total during November’s general election will likely be much lower.

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