March 10, 2004

Low Primary Turnout

Democrats may not be as revved up as Terry McAuliffe thinks:

At the height of this year's presidential primaries, on Feb. 20, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe declared that "people are turning out in record numbers" -- even though in the Virginia primary 10 days earlier, the 7.5 percent of Democrats who voted failed to match the only previous Democratic primary, and the figure was well below the 13.2 percent of Republicans who voted in their party's 2000 primary.

Only New Hampshire and Wisconsin saw truly impressive increases, according to Curtis Gans, who conducted the survey for the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

That may bode well for Democrats in the general election, given that both are important battleground states, but the lack of significant improvement elsewhere could signal that Democrats are not quite as mobilized as party officials once proclaimed.

"Democratic turnout in the party's presidential primaries through Super Tuesday was generally low -- in the aggregate, the third-lowest on record," Gans said.

"Democratic Turnout Seen So-So, Despite Party Assertions" [via Power Line]