SGV Primary database update: turnout numbers now available

Check out our database of primary results from San Gabriel Valley and Whittier area cities; you can now find out the total number of registered voters in each community, as well as how many of them actually showed up at the polls.

A couple of things stand out: the highest turnout in the area was in the foothill community of Sierra Madre, where nearly 50 percent (48.41, to be exact) of registered voters actuallly cast ballots. In second place was Altadena, (47.58 percent), and third was South Pasadena (45.12 percent). The largest city in the Valley, Pasadena, had a nearly 41 percent turnout, not too shabby compared to a lot of smaller cities that did not do as well despite much smaller voter pools.

Now what do all those cities have in common, besides high turnout? They all went to Obama.

Does it have to do with racial demographics? Well Pasadena and Altadena have large proportions of African American voters, who were solidly in the Obama camp, but Sierra Madre and South Pasadena do not. Does it mean that Obama's strength with independent voters gave him an edge in communities where larger numbers of voters turned out, thereby increasing his chances at garnering more independent votes? We'll try to crunch the independent turnout figures in those cities compared to others to find out if that theory holds water.

But higher turnout did not always help Obama. After those cities, the next-highest turnout rates in the area were in Avocado Heights (43.84 percent), Rio Hondo (43.47 percent) and Bassett (43.44 percent), predominantly Latino areas that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton.

Besides being predominantly Latino, Avocado Heights, Bassett and Rio Hondo are mostly working-class neighborhoods with low to average income levels, a demographic that heavily favored Clinton in part because of her strength on policy issues such as universal health-care and providing social services, according to USC politics professor Kareem Crayton.