Lowest county turnout ever

So, turnout for yesterday's county executive eleciton was 26.94 percent, making it the worst showing for an Allegheny County exec race since they started in 1999 and the worst turnout ever for a county leadership election (including the previous commissioner system).* The numbers ain't exactly apples to apples to due changes in voter registration rules, but I don't think anybody would argue turnout numbers are not swirling down.

Polls were all over the place from a 9-point Fitzgerald lead to an 18-point one, but he came out with a 24-point victory. At Null Space, Chris Briem argues there weren't that many undecideds at all in this election, and nobody was really paying attention:

I have a simple observation. There were not even enough people paying enough attention to this race to explain any shift in the polls over the last few days, or certainly over the last few weeks. People voted today as they would have if they had been asked to vote last month. It is not that there really were 28% undecided last month.  Just consider if that were true. The core votes for Raja certainly remained core Raja voters and that early poll matched his results at just about 31% exactly. It means that virtually 100% of the 'undecided' voters all decided en masse for Fitz in just the last couple weeks. No, of course they didn't.  Or if that is really true most need to rethink the interpretation of what 'undecided' means.

* According to county statistics the only local general election with a lower turnout was the 24% who showed up for the Nov. 2009 mayoral election among Luke Ravenstahl, Dok Harris and Kevin Acklin. The post 9/11 general in the 2001 Pgh mayor's race registered a 28.2%.