Considering State’s Primary Turnout
Speaking of primary turnout as I just was…
The state GOP is rightfully pleased to have turned out almost 25,000 more voters Tuesday than the Democrats did. This is the first time the state GOP has turned out more than the Dems for a presidential primary (though they did it in 1998 in a year without a presidential election).
We have known this is a red state, and the question has been that if Alabama is a red state, why are more people turning out in the Democratic primaries than Republican?
Three points to that…
- This is also the first time that the presidential primary has not been at the same time as local primary elections. Democrats are strong in a lot of county races. Republicans show their strength in the general election for president, but many of them vote in the local Democratic primary because that is often where races of local interest are. We can keep an eye out for the turnout by party for the June local primaries to see if this holds true.
- The presidential primaries themselves have not been so interesting as to excite people. A commenter mentioned 2000 as being "last time we had a contested primary on both sides" and pointed out that the Democrats beat the Republicans in primary turnout, the idea being that this year’s primary is a similar situation and that the turnout particularly bodes trouble for the Democrats; I believe it fair to say that our 2000 choices of Al Gore vs. Lyndon LaRouche and George W. Bush vs. Alan Keyes were not so compelling as to be the deciding factors about which primary most voters voted in. Local elections would be far more interesting for most people. We simply have not had interesting presidential primaries.
- The whole point of moving the state’s presidential primary to February was that we did not have much compelling reason to get excited about voting for uninteresting races that had largely already been decided. This year, we did have interesting races and turnout on both sides was terrific.
The Republicans justifiably celebrate (though it might be a sense of relief as much as victory), and Democrats in contact with the Parlor are quite pleased with their record turnout.
Good day all around.
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