Some mayoral candidates had a lane. Cherelle Parker had a coalition.

Philly has six big groups of voters. Three of them formed a coalition to elect Cherelle Parker in the mayor’s race. The other three fractured.

Black, Latino, and poor voters united so commandingly behind Cherelle Parker in Philly’s Democratic mayoral primary, she would have won without a single vote from the city’s other big voting blocs.

While Philadelphia voting preferences have historically split along racial lines, those divides were particularly pronounced this year. The city’s three majority-white voting groups — young white progressives, wealthy white liberals, and working-class white moderates — fractured their vote across multiple candidates. Parker swept a Black voting bloc that is traditionally establishment-aligned; a Black voting cluster that is generally more independent; and a group of poor voters and Latino voters.

“More so than any candidate, Cherelle was able to build that coalition,” said State Rep. Stephen Kinsey, a Parker backer from Northwest Philadelphia. “She has a history of working for the community, for small business and being from the community.”

Philadelphia’s wide array of voters fall into six broad clusters, The Inquirer found earlier this year, based on an analysis of past voting patterns. The clusters often diverge in voting preference but sometimes overlap, forming coalitions that candidates typically need to win elections. We revisited the six voting groups to see what happened in Tuesday’s primary.

Losing candidates won specific voting groups as expected — ones that matched their ideological and political lanes — but failed in a crowded race to consolidate much additional support from other clusters:

• Wealthy white liberal voters gave a plurality of their votes to former controller Rebecca Rhynhart, who ran with a technocratic vision for the mayor’s office.

• Younger white progressive voters gave a plurality to left-leaning Helen Gym, whose campaign culminated in a rally with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a leader of the progressive movement.

• Working-class white moderate voters gave a slight plurality to Allan Domb, who emphasized centrist solutions and talked frequently about basic services and law and order.

Black voters, who generally form two distinct voting clusters, joined together with poor voters and Latino voters in supporting Parker.

• Pro-establishment Black voters overwhelmingly backed Parker with 60% of their vote..

• Less-politically affiliated Black voters supported Parker with 50% of their vote.

• She won a plurality of support from the cluster of poor voters and Latino voters, delivering her one-third of votes cast.

• Her mandate didn’t extend too far into predominantly white neighborhoods, where she was a distant fourth place and received just 14% of the vote.

Of the serious contenders, Parker was the only Black candidate and some voters said they were motivated by the opportunity to elevate a Black woman to the highest office in the city. But Black candidates don’t automatically receive support from Black communities. As recently as the last competitive mayoral election, one of the Black voting clusters united around Jim Kenney, a white candidate, while the other supported his biggest rival, State Sen. Anthony H. Williams, who is Black.

“Obviously her strong support among Black Philadelphians was key,” said U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, who backed Parker. “But let’s not forget that was not automatic — she really had to campaign well and tell her story, which is a very authentic one that many Philadelphians identify with.”

Cherelle Parker’s campaign brought together two distinct groups of Black voters – along with the city’s group of poor voters and Latino voters

About 37% of Philadelphia’s voting-age population is Black, a group that holds different views, often correlated with age, economic status, or where they live. Voting trends over the last eight years show two distinct groups of Black voters, one preferring more establishment candidates and a second group that is less predictable and more independent.

Parker united both of them.

A former Council member and state legislator representing the Northwest, Parker received 61% of the vote among pro-establishment Black voters, a group of older, more middle class residents of neighborhoods like East Mount Airy and West Oak Lane.

Parker’s role in the political movement that raised her, known as the Northwest Coalition, also contributed to her support. That group, which organized in the late 1970s to grow Black political power in the city, was instrumental in Kenney’s election in 2015.

“It’s not anything new to me,” U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, a Parker backer, said of the strong showing of support in the Northwest. “I’ve been representing that area for a long time. It’s a very, very strong, solid turnout area.”

Parker also won 50% of the vote among less politically affiliated Black voters, a group largely congregated in West and Southwest Philadelphia, as well as the lower part of North Philadelphia. She was also the top pick in neighborhoods impacted by gun violence, which overlap with parts of this group.

The two groups fractured somewhat in Philly’s last competitive mayoral primary in 2015, with Kenney winning a plurality of pro-establishment Black voters and Williams winning a plurality of less politically affiliated Black voters.

Turnout in the Black clusters, Parker’s base of support, lagged 2015. So Parker won by running up the margins in these groups, not by motivating an unusual number to vote.

This year, Philadelphia’s two large Black voting clusters alone delivered Parker nearly as many votes as runner-up Rebecca Rhynhart received across the entire city.

Still there were differences between the two Black voting clusters. The pro-establishment group supported her by close to 11 percentage points more than the less politically affiliated group. And the two groups split somewhat in their support for other candidates. True to its slightly independent streak, the less affiliated group delivered larger margins to Gym and Rhynhart than did the pro-establishment group.

Much smaller but also meaningful to Parker’s support was the cluster of poor voters and Latino voters. This group had the lowest turnout, just 16%, and comprised the smallest number of voters in Tuesday’s election, but it delivered a plurality of its votes to Parker.

Former Councilmember Maria Quiñones Sánchez, who represented the Seventh District that is home to a large Latino population and anchors this cluster, endorsed Parker in the race, specifically noting that she liked Parker’s personal working-class story. Quiñones Sánchez’s support potentially boosted Parker’s appeal in neighborhoods like Kensington, Fairhill, and Hunting Park.

“Cherelle won the Latino vote resoundingly,” Quiñones Sánchez said, “because she made clear her commitment to making sure Latinos are fairly represented in their government.”

The three majority-white clusters each went their separate ways

Voters in predominantly white neighborhoods made up the majority of the vote in the Democratic primary — but they divided across candidates, splitting their voting power.

The cluster of wealthy white liberal voters was the second-smallest group in vote share. While it has a relatively small population, it’s a very engaged group and had the highest turnout, the only one of the six clusters to clear 40% participation.

This cluster was the most united of the white voting blocs, backing Rhynhart with close to 50% of its vote — giving her the most votes of any cluster. Gym was a distant second at 26%. Of all six groups, this group gave the smallest vote share to Parker.

Younger white progressive voters were more divided. Gym received more than 40% of the cluster’s votes, while Rhynhart got a solid third. The group unified in rejecting Allan Domb, who received less than 7% of their votes.

Domb did better in the final group, working-class white moderate voters. He claimed a narrow plurality of this cluster’s votes, just a hair higher than Rhynhart’s 26%.

The working-class white moderate cluster also delivered 12% of its vote to Jeff Brown, who won similar shares of the Black and Latino clusters but barely registered among the other majority-white groups.

Parker, who ran on a more centrist platform than Gym and Rhynhart, performed better among the moderate group than she did in the two other majority-white voting groups. She was supported by several laborers unions and ward leaders across the city, including in the Northeast, which surely helped her expand her support there.

“Cherelle was able to do moderately well in the Northeast among working-class white voters,” said Boyle, whose congressional district encompasses the Northeast. “So when you’re finishing a strong first among Black voters, a strong first among Latinos, and doing moderately well among working class white voters — in Philadelphia, that’s a winning coalition.”