A deep dive into Krasner’s third-term win

As we often do here at Broad + Liberty, I waited until nearly all the results were in from Tuesday’s election and then fired up the old Photoshop to make some maps, starting with Larry Krasner’s third straight victory for the office of District Attorney.

The citywide totals look very similar to the 2021 race. With 1697 out of 1703 precincts reporting, we can see that Krasner defeated Judge Pat Dugan by a total of 75.92 percent to 23.96 percent. Four years ago, he defeated attorney Chuck Peruto by a similar margin: 71.81 percent to 27.92 percent. 

Since we have precinct-level data, let’s go division by division and map it out. Here’s 2025’s map:

That is about what you’d expect. Republicans were strong in the Far Northeast and parts of South Philly, Democrats won everywhere else. But how did it compare to 2021? Well, it was almost identical:

Stronger candidate? Cross-party endorsements? Union endorsements? It didn’t seem to move the needle. Krasner won by about the same amount and in very closely the same places as he did four years ago.

There are a few minor differences, if you look closely. 

The gentrification of South Philadelphia and the River Wards continued to grind forward – you can see the frontier of solid dark blue advancing block by block into the old neighborhoods. Not terribly quickly, but inexorably.

Likewise, Roxborough and Manayunk each get slightly bluer, though not excessively so. The Near Northeast, already fairly Democratic, grew more so as it continues to diversify and grow. But even the Far Northeast is a little less Republican than it was four years ago, at least in this election. That, perhaps, is the most surprising: Dugan seemed like a candidate tailor-made to win over Northeast Democrats, especially after his labor union endorsements.

One spot in the 65th ward went from medium blue to dark blue because of some legal changes: it has become much easier to vote from jail in Philadelphia. Certainly, there’s a constituency perfect for “Let ‘Em Loose” Larry.

North and West Philadelphia appear identical on the two maps, but one thing I noticed was that there were probably a couple dozen divisions where Krasner took 100 percent of the vote in 2021. I did not find any in 2025, though it’s possible that I missed one. Either way, the change is indicative of President Donald Trump’s inroads with black voters: very minor, but nonetheless noticeable.

Trump is, of course, the elephant in the room in any election these days, and his presence was felt in another, larger way: turnout was up significantly in the city. Dugan tallied 25,000 more votes than Peruto did four years ago — and that number will climb as the final provisional ballots are tallied and the last four precincts report. But Krasner’s own vote total increased even more, growing by more than 116,000 votes and counting.

Krasner’s 75.92 percent was a landslide, but we should also note that he trailed the figures posted by Kamala Harris in 2024 (78.57 percent), Joe Biden in 2020 (81.21 percent), and Hillary Clinton in 2016 (82.30 percent). From that point of view, this is a slightly below-average Democratic win in a Democratic city. In fact, the last Democratic presidential candidate to win less than 75 percent of the Philadelphia vote was Bill Clinton in 1992, when he tallied 68.16 percent in a three-way race.

Compared to the little-noticed City Controller race that also took place on Tuesday, Krasner also ran behind the ticket: Democrat Christy Brady won that race with 86.14 percent of the vote, more than ten percentage points better than Krasner.

Trump was not on the 2025 ballot, but Krasner made opposition to him the centerpiece of his campaign. It doesn’t make sense on paper — there isn’t that much interaction between the President of the United States and the District Attorney of Philadelphia — but electorally, it was the perfect thing to encourage enraged anti-Trumpers to come out to vote.

If that’s what motivates you, then election day was just another No Kings rally — and one with a lot more permanent effect.

Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty