(derekbaker)

And the Numbers May Support It

So I pulled the lever for Obama. (And, yes, in New York City, we still use voting machines from the 1960s that use levers to record our votes. That's supposed to change by next year, but we'll see.)

Like a lot of other people quoted in the news, it felt good to vote for a candidate I was actually excited about. I'll be very happy if, instead of Obama, Clinton gets elected in November. But she's so much of a known quantity, I don't expect there to be much excitement over the prospect of her as president, other than that it will mean there won't be a Republican administration finally and, of course, the first woman president of the United States is exciting in its own right, just as the first black president would be.

Several people I'm close to voted for Hillary, and we all had our reasons. For a lot of people, it probably comes down to a choice between competency and vision -- and only the most hyperbolic would say he's incompetent or she has no vision, so the distinctions are more shades of gray than (if you'll excuse the expression) black and white.

We're in an interesting period now: Obama is slightly ahead in the delegate count, but Clinton has more of the Democratic party "superdelegates" in her column. As John Aravosis of AMERICAblog has pointed out, this could lead to a very fractious (and damaging) national convention this summer if Obama wins more delegates through primary voters and caucus-goers but the superdelegates throw it to Hillary. Such a move could burn up a lot of goodwill, activism, and cross-over appeal moving into the general election, I think. Hopefully, the remaining contests will be decisive enough to avoid that, or a similarly damaging, situation.

And Hillary is herself in a tough position now, as Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen on Politico point out. Many of the upcoming races favor Barack (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) and/or are caucus states where he tends to do better (Washington, Nebraska, Maine, Hawaii); he raised twice as much money as she did in January; and he generally has more independents and Republicans voting for him in open primaries, such as Texas on March 4. So it really is still up in the air.

Hearing last night about all the high turnout, especially in the Democratic primaries, I was wondering if any hopeful extrapolation could be made between the number of people engaged enough this year to vote in the primaries versus how the actual election went four years ago. So I crunched some numbers, based on Wikipedia or CNN sources of votes in the primary and votes in the general election four years ago. Bear with me here. And keep your eye on that fifth column. (Pun intended.)

Super-Duper Tuesday Turnout, 2008, vs. Votes Cast in General Election, 2004
	Democrats	Republicans	R+%	D+%		Kerry	Bush	R04+%	D04+%
Alabama	533,521	550,573	3			693,933	1,176,394	41
Arizona	368,828	439,347	19			893,524	1,104,294	19
Arkansas	273,449	203,533		26		470,230	573,182	18
California	3,697,467	2,196,311		41		6,745,485	5,509,826		22
Connecticut	349,288	150,159		57		857,488	693,826		24
Delware	96,341	50,062		48		200,152	171,660		17
Georgia	1,040,873	952,692		8		1,366,149	1,914,254	29
Illinois	1,937,730	873,572		55		2,891,989	2,346,608		23
Massachusetts	1,220,745	496,171		59		1,803,800	1,071,109		68
Missouri	823,530	584,618		29		1,259,171	1,455,713	14
New Jersey	1,103,824	554,894		50		1,911,430	1,670,003		14
New York	1,718,155	602,215		65		4,314,280	2,962,567		46
Oklahoma	417,095	329,843		21		503,966	959,792	47
Tennessee	612,791	547,614		11		1,036,477	1,384,375	25
Utah	122,617	283,759	131			241,199	663,742	64
Total	14,316,254	8,815,363		38		25,189,273	23,657,345		6

I didn't include states that had caucuses, because those are each run so idiosyncratically and turnout can't be compared the way it is in primary states. Plus, there were some Republican caucuses yesterday that didn't even have a concurrent Democratic caucus. So just in looking at the 15 states that held primaries yesterday, Democratic turnout was 38% higher than Republicans.

That may not be such notable number in itself, since it included the first-, third- and fifth-ranked states according to population (California, New York, and Illinois), all of them already blue according to the 2004 presidential election. But look closer at the states I've highlighted in bold above.

George Bush took each of those states in 2004 against Kerry, but they had higher turnout among Democrats this past Super Tuesday than they had among Republicans. Arkansas went for Bush by 18 percent -- but 26 percent more Democrats turned out for the Arkansas primary. Georgia was even more solidly blue than Arkansas four years ago, yet more Democrats still turned out for this primary. Missouri, considered a bellweather state, had 29 percent more Democrats voting in this primary than Republicans, despite also being in the blue column four years ago.

Finally, the one that intrigues me (because I'm originally from there and it's the best evidence of the Reagan Revolution, which moved the state from being solidly Democratic to solidly Republican in national politics, even though Democrats outnumber Republicans by 11.6 percent) went for Bush over Kerry by a whopping 47 percent. But it still had 21 percent higher turnout among Democrats in the primary. And, based on the 302,169 votes cast in the 2004 Democratic primary in Oklahoma, 38 percent higher turnout this time around.

Trends like this could bode very well for the Democrats this November, leaving aside the he-said/she-said of the current race (and, for that matter, leaving aside race, as well). A lot of course could happen between now and November. John McCain could (will likely, in fact) win the nomination, and he's got the most cross-over appeal among the Republican candidates. Mayor Mike (Bloomberg) could enter the race, which would be a real shame, because he's a pretty good mayor but doesn't stand a chance to win as president (as he himself has pointed out, he's a short, Jewish, divorced New Yorker -- not exactly going to be swept to victory across the Sun Belt), nor should he. Ralph Nader, unsafe at any speed in any election, could enter from the left; Ron Paul could decide to run on his own on the right.

So how 15 states turned out yesterday for their primaries may hold nothing more than wisps of smoke to augur some fire down below. But barring a guaranteed win, which I'd take if I could, I'll take this for now as a hopeful sign that voters may finally be saying, in the words of George W. Bush: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me... you can't get fooled again."

Labels: politics

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