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Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Turnout Explodes in South Carolina
Posted by DavidNYCYeah, so South Carolina isn't a swing state. But it's the handiest state we can use to make comparisons with prior years: It's the only state which had a similarly timed primary in 1992. Back then, 114,000 voters turned out. (Bill Clinton won with 63% of the vote, in case you're curious.) This time around, more people than that voted for John Edwards alone. In fact, turnout was more than double, with over 280,000 ballots cast.
Two-hundred and eighty thousand.
That's pretty damn awesome if you ask me. I also thought it was great to see that the SC Democratic Party, which had to pay for this primary on its own, was able to do a an excellent job fundraising, with more than half the contributions coming in small-dollar sums. All in all, this is nothing but good news.
We probably won't have too many other primary states we can directly compare to old elections. Invariably, states switch from primary to caucus systems (or vice versa), or they change dates, or interest in a race simply wanes once there is a presumptive nominee, driving down turnout. If you have any ideas for any good comparisons, though, let me know.
Also, in case you missed it, no fewer than three major polling outfits have shown Bush with approval ratings under the Mendoza line this past week. Speaking of which, did you know that Dubya played baseball on Yale's freshman team? I didn't, but I'd sure love to know what his batting average was - and if it was higher than his GPA.
Posted at 02:39 AM in Safe States | Technorati
Comments
Check out the turnout figures for North Dakota! Like SC, North Dakota is not a swing state.
According to CNN, turnout for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL caucus was 10,508 voters. In 2000, only 2,188 voters participated. There's a lot of factors at play (2000s caucus was irrelevent; no one campaigned there, so many North Dakotans boycotted), but a near-500% improvement is nothing to snear at!
Let's see any other state get their participation up by this much.
Posted by: Luke Francl at February 4, 2004 11:28 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
I agree that ND's turnout increase is nice to see. But I'm more amazed that 2,000 people bothered to caucus at all in 2000, when the election meant nothing.
Posted by: DavidNYC at February 4, 2004 03:12 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Well, if it's anything like MN's caucus, it's also the process to become a delegate at the state convention and write the party platform and such. So if you want to be involved in that, you have to go to the caucus. But I don't know if the ND caucus works like that.
Posted by: Luke Francl at February 4, 2004 07:36 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
I remember Joe Kennedy, the one who used to be a Congressman, saying how he had learned that "more people vote than come to rallies." I wonder if that doesn't apply here, that everyone who really hates George Bush is getting out and voting in these primaries and caucuses and what we are seeing is the entire universe of folks who have an animus against Bush. Which leaves the other 90% of population . . .
Posted by: Karen at February 6, 2004 01:17 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment