Quote:
Originally posted by pulque
Intruder, the voter turn-out for the democratic primaries/caucuses has been quite high compared to previous years. In my Washington State, which admittedly doesnt count for much, there was about 5 times the turnout, I believe. About double participation occured in Oklahoma, Deleware, S. Carolina, Arizona, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, New Hampshire, etc.
Republican primary participation has always been higher in numbers in places like S. Carolina. If you compare democratic primaries to democratic primaries you will find that the numbers of participating voters have increased.
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Actually, state-by-state, turnout varied. Some states had significantly higher turnouts, some not much higher, and some less.
It is also to some extent misleading to compare changes in turnout. For many of these states, there was no contest in previous years, so turnout was low because there was no point (as the Newsday article implies for NY). It is a logical leap, not necessarily supported by evidence, to ascribe any higher turnout to anger at Bush.
New York: Total turnout for the 2004 NY Democratic Party primary was 673,620. New York's 2000 primary was on March 7, 2000, and turnout was 974,463, so Newsday's blaming low turnout on the time of year is ridiculous. In 1996, Pres. Clinton was the only candidate on the ballot so the Democratic primary wasn't held. Newsday's putting it on Kerry already being the presumptive candidate doesn't explain it, as by the 2000 NY primary, Gore had already left Bill Bradley behind too (Gore 66%, Bradley 33%). The main factor is the cost of the NY media market, so no candidate wanted to waste money here. In 2000, it was slightly different in that the Republican field was still open, so there was more attention paid in the NY media to the election in general.
California is also an expensive media market. California, though, had propositions on the ballot as well as a party primary, so there were other reasons to vote besides Kerry vs. Bush. California Democratic turnout was 2,740,023, compared to 2,654,114 in 2000 (Gore 81%) and 2,523,062 in 1996 (Clinton 93%).
For the most part, increased Democratic turnout in certain states seems to reflect the fact that there was a contest for the nomination. Many states held no primary in 1996, as Clinton faced no rival, and had weak turnout in 2000, as the Gore/Bradley contest was either not big in that state or already over.
Looking through a few states where I have data:
- Georgia more than doubled turnout compared to 2000 (which was triple the 1996 turnout).
- Connecticut turnout dropped by a third from 2000, and was slightly less than 1996
- Tennessee turnout was up 71% from 2000 (when Gore took his home state with 92%, only to lose it in the general election), while 2000 turnout was up 56% from 1996, when Clinton was the only candidate
- Oklahoma was up significantly from 2000, but less than 1996
- Delaware tripled from 2000, which had been only slightly higher than 1996
- Arizona 2004 turnout was almost half of 2000 turnout; in 1996 hardly any Democrats voted in the Arizona primary
- Missouri 2004 turnout was up a little over 50% from 2000; there was no 1996 primary
- New Mexico had a caucus; the New Mexico primary is in June. Caucus turnout was 96,704. You can't really compare caucus turnout to primary turnout, but the June 2000 primary had 132,280 and the June 1996 primary had 121,362 Democrats
To discount the Kerry's-already-wrapped-it-up-so-why-bother factor, go back to New Hampshire, when the nomination was still up for grabs: 2004 turnout was 219,246, up 42% from the 154,609 who turned out in 2000. But the 2000 number was up 41% from the 91,974 who turned out in 1996, so it is hard to read much into this. However, I would note that President Bush only got 115 write-in votes for the Democratic nomination, while he had gotten 827 back in 2000
Still, that's an improvement over the 3 write-in votes for Bush (either him or his father) in 1996.