Did you see his name?
There was a guy named Rocky on the Democratic primary ballot, right there under Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. He’s Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, a California businessman and the longest-of-longshot candidate for president. He’s been in the race since the Iowa caucuses and appeared on nearly every state’s ballot.
And, yes, Pennsylvania voted for Rocky at a higher rate than almost anywhere else in the United States. Yesterday, 14,202 people here voted for him, giving him about .86 percent of the total Democratic votes. The only other non-caucus primary where he did similarly well was Delaware, our next-door neighbor, where people are probably pretty obsessed with the movie Rocky. He got 1.09 percent of the vote there yesterday.
Elsewhere across the United States, support for Rocky was mostly below half of one percent. Check it out on this map (the data comes from various media reports, Wikipedia and various state election boards):
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Now, Philadelphians usually aren’t as excited about Rocky. It’s not that we hate the movies, but we want people to know this city is a whole lot more than a Sylvester Stallone flick (and cheesesteaks etc.). So did Philadelphia embrace Rocky De La Fuente at the polls?
Nope.
He only got 1,464 votes in Philly, about 10 percent of his total votes for the state. About 25 percent of Hillary Clinton’s total Pennsylvania votes came from Philadelphia. And nearly 20 percent of Bernie Sanders’ Pennsylvania votes came from here.
So Philadelphia wasn’t feeling Rocky.
And for the record, De La Fuente is totally trying to compare himself to the movie character. It appeared to be his top campaign strategy on social media yesterday.
