Here are some numbers for New York City:

  • According to the NYC Department of Planning and the U.S. Census, there are 8,168,338 people in the Big Apple.
  • The 2000 U.S. Census demographics show that about 89% of those people were over age 18, which means that there should be roughly 7 million potential voters.
  • The Board of Elections reported in March there were only 3,903,852 registered voters across the five boroughs.
  • On Wednesday, 1.2 million people voted.

The next time you hear someone grousing about or praising the city government you can feel comfortable that the odds are better than 3-1 that they didn’t have anything to do with it.