City officials reported Detroit’s voter turnout in Tuesday’s mayoral primary at 14 percent.

On Tuesday’s ballot were choices for Detroit mayor -businessman David Bing and interim Mayor Kenneth Cockrel won- and six ballot proposals.

While at first glance 14 percent turnout seems shockingly low, political consultant and pollster Mark Grebner, whose company conducted tracking for the primary, says that the voter turnout percentage may be deceiving. 

Grebner noted that a more accurate way to measure this week’s voter turnout in Detroit may be to look at the number of people who voted in November’s presidential election (which had a very high turnout) and use that as a reference point. He said 320,000 people voted in the last November’s election.

“Tuesday just about 29 percent of those very same people got themselves to the polls, or at least found a stamp for their absentee ballots,” Grebner said.