Voting Behavior in the 2019 Hartford Municipal Election
With the upcoming municipal election in Hartford in mind, CTData met with Hartford organizations that are engaged in get-out-the-vote activities as part of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s Get out the Vote grant program. Through interactive sessions, this group identified several questions that would be helpful in their efforts. The questions we explore here are:
What was the participation of currently registered Hartford residents during the previous municipal election (2019)?
What share of residents in the neighborhoods voted in that election? How does that differ by age group?
In which neighborhoods have residents voted at higher rates and lower rates?
Before publishing the findings of these questions, we met again with the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s Get Out the Vote grant program recipients for a Data Walk. During this session, we shared preliminary data visualizations to those who live and work in the Hartford neighborhoods. As they reviewed the data, they shared what they found interesting, insights, and context. The feedback received has strengthened our work and has been woven throughout the results and visualizations.
It is important to note that the data we use is the Secretary of State Voter Registration file (see the Data Notes & Limitations section below), which means that we can see whether current residents voted in past elections, even if they lived somewhere else. This analysis looks back at voting patterns in the 2019 municipal election. The analysis is broken into three sections:
Total voters in the 2019 election compared to number of residents 18 and older
Participation by registered voters currently living in Hartford
Voter participation and characteristics by neighborhood
We would like to thank the Hartford Votes Coalition and the BSL Education Foundation for funding this work. We would also like to thank the grantees of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s Get Out the Vote Project for engaging in conversations to identify data that would be helpful in their work.
To further explore the data used in this analysis, head to the Hartford Neighborhood Voter Explorer Dashboard:
Important Data Notes & Limitations
This analysis uses Secretary of State Voter Registration point-in-time data as of May 1, 2023. This dataset allows us to look at current addresses of currently registered voters and which previous Connecticut elections they voted in, but not the town in which they voted. The data that follows includes voters with current (May 2023) Hartford addresses who voted in the November 2019 municipal elections. It does not include voters who participated in the 2019 Hartford Municipal Election but did not live in Hartford as of May 2023. It may include voters who participated in a November 2019 election in a different town in Connecticut who now are registered to vote in Hartford.
This proxy results in 8,577 voters in the municipal election in Hartford. According to the Secretary of State, 10,820 voters participated in the 2019 municipal election.
Addresses were geocoded using the Census Geocoder. 98.6% of voting records were matched to census blocks, which were allocated to neighborhoods based on their centroid. Note that North Meadows and South Meadows are excluded from this analysis due to low numbers of registered voters.
We used data from the 2020 Decennial Census, the 2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, and the 2020 American Community Survey 5-year estimates Citizen Voting Age Population tabulation to supplement this analysis.
Total Voters & Share of Residents 18 and Older
Of the 93,051 Hartford residents aged 18 and older, 12% (10,820) voted in the 2019 Municipal Election in Hartford, according to the Secretary of the State Elections Management System data portal.
The number of residents aged 18 and older is a proxy for the highest potential number of eligible voters. It comes from the 2020 Census, which counted the population as of April 2020, five months after the 2019 municipal election.
Based on the 2020 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, the Citizen Voting Age Population (CVAP) tabulation estimates that 86% of Hartford residents aged 18 and older are eligible to vote. Applying this ratio to the 2020 population, about 14% of US citizens currently living in Hartford aged 18 and older voted in the November 2019 election.
In five neighborhoods, more than 10% of residents aged 18 and older voted: West End (17%), South West (15%), Blue Hills (15%), Downtown (12%), and Northeast (11%). Only one neighborhood, West End, exceeds the national average of 15% of voting-aged residents voting in the 2019 municipal election. Neighborhoods with less than half of the city’s rate would be considered “voter deserts.” Asylum Hill (2%) and Barry Square (5%) fit this criterion.
Age Group
Voters in Hartford were more likely to be over 55: the median age of voters was 58, and 55% of voters were 55 or older. Only 11% of voters were younger than 35, despite 39% of Hartford residents being between ages 18 and 34.
Sex
Of the 8,577 currently registered voters, 56% (4,837) identified as female and 41% (3,490) identified as male. The data source includes a third category, unknown, for voters who did not select male or female. According to the 2021 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 52% of Hartford residents ages 18 and older were female and 48% were male. Hartford’s higher rate of female voters is in line with national research showing that women are more likely to vote than men.
This pattern was consistent in all but three neighborhoods. In the Downtown neighborhood, 53% of those who voted were male, and 60% of residents were male. In Parkville, 50% of voters were male and 52% of residents were male. And in West End, 51% of voters and 45% of residents were male.
Otherwise, females voted at a share that is higher than their share of the population. In five neighborhoods, more than 60% of current residents who voters voted were female. In Northeast, 66% of current residents who voted are female, and 68% of residents are female. In Blue Hills, 64% of current residents who voted are female, while 50% are female. In Clay-Arsenal, 62% of current residents who voted are female, while 59% of residents are female. In Sheldon-Charter Oak, 61% of current residents who voted are female, while 50% of residents are female. And in Upper Albany, 61% of current residents who voted are female while 55% of residents are female.
Voter Participation
Overall, 14% of Hartford’s 63,325 currently registered voters participated in a 2019 municipal election. In the 2019 Municipal Election in Hartford, voter turnout was 18.14%, meaning that 10,820 of the 59,637 residents who were registered in Hartford in 2019 turned out to vote in that election. Statewide, voter turnout was 33.55% in the November 2019 Municipal Election.
In the neighborhood-level analysis that follows, we refer to “voter participation,” not “voter turnout.” By “voter participation,” we are referring to currently registered voters who lived in Hartford neighborhoods as of May 2023 and voted in a municipal election in 2019. It is not an official voter turnout measure.
Voter participation varied at the neighborhood level. Neighborhoods where residents voted at 1.5x the rate of the city can be considered “voting oases”. Three neighborhoods could be considered voting oases based on voter participation in the 2019 municipal election: West End (28%), Blue Hills (24%), and South West (21%).
On the other hand, neighborhoods where current residents voted at less than half of the city’s overall participation rate would be considered “voter deserts”. National research, which analyzed data from multiple election cycles, shows that voting is highly relational, thus deserts are self-reinforcing in lowering voter participation. Asylum Hill (4%) is the only neighborhood that fits the voter desert criterion.
Voter Participation and Neighborhood Characteristics
Age Group
Voter participation varied also by age group. These age groups refer to the age that currently registered voters were in 2019. Participation was highest among voters ages 65 and older (27%), and lowest among voters 18 to 24 (3%) and 25 to 34 (5%). As age groups ascended, voter participation increased.
West End (10%) and Downtown (8%) had the highest voter participation rates among voters ages 18 to 24. In all other neighborhoods, 5% or less of currently registered residents voted among this age group.
Voters aged 25 to 34 had 3% to 14% participation, with at least 10% participation in West End (14%) and Blue Hills (10%). Voter participation started to reach over 10% more frequently (seven neighborhoods) in the 35 to 44 age group, and all but one neighborhood saw more than 10% participation in the 45 to 54 age group.
In Blue Hills (34%) and West End (33%), 1 in 3 currently registered voters 55 to 64 voted in the 2019 municipal election. Of voters 65 and older, Downtown, Blue Hills, West End, South West, and Northeast had at least 1 in 3 voters participate.
Asylum Hill had low participation across age groups, topping out at 6% of currently registered residents 65 and older participating.
Sex
Of Hartford residents currently registered to vote, females voted more frequently than males (14% and 12%, respectively) in 2019. Blue Hills (8 percentage points) and Sheldon-Charter Oak (7 percentage points) had the largest percentage point differences in voter participation between females and males. In Downtown and West End, voter participation was higher among currently registered male residents.
Note: The voter registration file provides sex and age of registered voters, so we were able to calculate voter participation for the sex and age groups above. For the variables that follow, we looked at overall voter participation rates for neighborhoods alongside neighborhood-level data from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates.
Data on the neighborhood characteristics below is best explored using the Hartford Neighborhood Voter Explorer dashboard. Below is a summary of overall findings from the dashboard.
Race and Ethnicity
According to the 2021 ACS 5-year estimates, Hartford is 45% Hispanic, 34% Black, 15% white, and 3% Asian.
The three neighborhoods with the highest Hispanic populations – Frog Hollow (72%), Behind the Rocks (69%), and Parkville (69%) – currently registered voters participated at rates equal to or within four percentage points of Hartford’s 14% participation rate: Frog Hollow (11%), Behind the Rocks (14%), and Parkville (10%).
Neighborhoods with the highest Black populations had higher participation than Hartford’s overall rate: Upper Albany (72% Black, 16% participation), Blue Hills (70% Black, 24% participation), and Northeast (57% Black, 15% participation).
Downtown (48%), West End (34%), and Blue Hills (24%) are the neighborhoods with the highest white populations and were among the four neighborhoods with the highest voter participation (18%, 28%, and 24% participation, respectively).
Downtown (21%) and Sheldon-Charter Oak (14%) have the highest Asian populations in Hartford. Voter participation was 18% in Downtown and 15% in Sheldon-Charter Oak, both higher than Hartford’s rate.
Language Spoken at Home
In Hartford, 57% of households speak only English at home, 36% speak Spanish at home, and 7% speak other languages at home. In six of the nine neighborhoods with higher than Hartford’s participation rate, more than 50% of households spoke only English at home.
The four neighborhoods with more than 50% of households speaking Spanish at home had voter participation rates at or slightly below Hartford’s overall rate: Frog Hollow (11%), Behind the Rocks (14%), South End (14%), and Parkville (10%).
Median Household Income
Median household income varied in neighborhoods with high voter participation, but household income was consistently lower than Hartford’s median of $42,468 in neighborhoods with lower voter participation among currently registered residents.
Downtown, South West, and South End have the three highest median household incomes and had participation rates of 18%, 21%, and 14% respectively. West End, which had the highest participation of 28%, had a median household income below Hartford’s median ($35,021).
Percent Earning Above Poverty
Blue Hills (90%), South West (87%), and Downtown (85%) had the highest percentage of residents above poverty and were among neighborhoods with the highest voter participation. Clay-Arsenal (50%) and South Green (51%) had the lowest percentage of residents above poverty, and had lower than Hartford’s 14% overall participation rate (10% and 9% respectively).
Educational Attainment
Overall, 17% of Harford residents age 25 and older have a Bachelor’s degree or higher. Downtown has the highest percent of residents with a Bachelor’s degree (81%) and had a participation rate of 18%. Voter participation varied among neighborhoods where less than 10% of residents have a Bachelor’s degree: Upper Albany (16%) had higher than Hartford’s overall participation, Behind the Rocks had average participation (14%), and Clay-Arsenal had lower participation (10%).
Renting and Owning Housing
Nearly 3 in 4 households in Hartford are renters (74%). While neighborhoods with low voter participation (less than Hartford’s rate of 14%) did have high proportions of renters, some neighborhoods with high participation did as well. West End had the highest participation rate (28%), and 81% of its households are renters. In Blue Hills and South West, with the next-highest participation rates, less than 35% of households rent. Sheldon-Charter Oak has the highest proportion of renters (94%) and had a participation rate of 15%.
Thanks again to the Hartford Votes Coalition and the BSL Education Foundation for funding this work. Thank you to the grantees of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving’s Get Out the Vote Project for engaging in conversations to identify data that would be helpful in their work.
For More Information
Learn more about voters in our state on our Get Out the Vote Data page. If you have data questions that you would like explored through an analysis like this one, you can set up a call with one of our staff to explore your project idea. You can also learn more what we do and the services we provide. For training and tips on how to use data to inform your personal and professional life, register for one of our CTData Academy workshops or browse our blog. You can keep up with us by subscribing to the CTData newsletter and following us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.