Democratic Voter Turnout in 2008 Primaries Trumps Republican Turnout

In the 2004 Presidential election voter turn out in Texas favored the Republicans. 4,526,917 (Bush) Republican vs. 2,832,704 (Kerry) Democrats. Bush was favored by 1.6 times over Kerry. However in 2008, the race is looking like it will be a very different story for Texas Democrats if the recent Primary voter trends are replicated in Texas.

I tallied from CNN’s online election center the total number of votes cast for the Democratic and Republican Primaries. Caucuses were excluded since it’s insanely difficult to determine number of individual votes proportional to the caucus votes. Although, I will add over all turnout numbers for the caucus states later (when I can find the data). From the 18 states that have held primaries for both parties, I highlight some interesting numbers:

Nearly 1.5 times more Democrats voted than Republicans
Democrats = 16,370,157 Republicans = 11,070,982

Both Hillary and Obama beat McCain in total number of votes
Hillary Supporters = 1.74 x McCain Supporters
Obama Supporters = 1.68 x McCain Supporters

In two key swing states the Democrats handedly beat the Republican winner in total number of votes
FL = 857,208 Hillary vs. 693,508 McCain
MO = 405,284 Obama vs. 395,287 Hillary vs. 194,304 McCain

Hillary is favored in Primaries on the Democratic side, about a quarter million more people have voted for Hillary over Obama; it grows to nearly a half million more if you add NM and MA. (Obama fans will point out that he beats Hillary in the caucuses).
8,169,085 Hillary vs. Obama 7,887,216 *
8,942,330 Hillary vs. Obama 8,466,634**
*18 states with FL & MI (note Obama receives credit for half the uncommitted since his name was not on the ballot)
**Including NM and MA – for which the republican have not yet had primaries.

See 2008 Voter Turnout for Primaries in order to see how I came up with these numbers. Again to make this crystal clear this analysis is only for the states that held Primaries.

I think we should introduce a few divisions and controls to clean up the data a bit more.

First, let’s consider only closed primary states, on the chance that in open primaries it is less strong a predictor of what ticket someone will vote in the general. E.g., Democrats for Mitt, or Republicans voting for Hillary over Obama for strategic reasons.

Second, we’d have to test the hypothesis based on previous primary/generals. Does this hold true generally? iirc, I read somewhere that there have been instances in the past where high primary turnout did not translate into turnout in the general.

Third, you’d have to correct for how contested the primary is. A contested primary will generally lead to high turnout among people who have high stakes in intraparty politics. This core group might be marshaled into battle for a close primary, but not be representative of voter’s in general. You might get high turnout among this dedicated group that would not translate into the general.

Just a few points for thought. Of course I want this force multiplier to hold true in the general, but it’s not time to get soft and coast yet. :)

ian

I think these are all valid points and I will take a look at them. I would offer this in the mean time for consideration on the last two of your points.

Second point - The translation from primary to a general election is definitely not a sure fire thing. I agree. However, considering the high percentage (>77%) of satisfaction that voters in primaries have with both Obama and Hillary, I am more inclined to believe that there is momentum to translate high primary turnout to high general election turnout. If you consider the root cause of the high turnout (desire for change, ) then this bodes well for a proportional positive translation between primaries and general election turnout. If you take the worst case scenario of FL where Republican campaigning was uncontested and look at Democratic turnout you will find that it was nearly competitive (0.8 of Repb). Furthermore the front runner on the Dem side had more votes than any single republican. Which argues that the republican side is far more divided about their choices and more likely to be dissatisfied with McCain as their nominee.

Third point - The small core group that always votes in contested primaries is probably best represented by the primaries with the lower turnouts. The fact that Dem turnouts have been blasting (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/5519168.html) away prior year turnout numbers is indicative that we have already moved past the small intraparty core that always shows up.

I guess my main point here is that if the voter turn out is so high for the Primaries than General Election turnout is definitely going to be very high too. In Texas for example general election turnout averages nearly 35 points more of the voting age population.

http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu/html/vce/features/0302_01/turnout.html

[...] previously broke out the numbers for the voter turn-out in the Primaries and promised to update it with caucus numbers. Well, MSNBC [...]