For all the talk of “Red State Missouri”, Democrats did not do too shabbily when it came time to turn out and vote in the key state and congressional primaries last night.
First, if you look at the vote for governor Republican voting in a hotly contested party primary, only outperformed Jay Nixon and a minor opponent by 38,081 votes. In the Republican leaning MO-09 where both parties had contested primaries, Republicans outperformed Democrats by 3,312 votes.
The most important result, in my opinion, came out of the MO-06 where, with only 84% of the Democratic vote reporting, was running ahead of Sam Graves by 578 votes. Does primary turnout necessarily predict general election results? Not always. But it is a good measure of enthusiasm of party voters and, and when you take into account a number of factors, it looks like it is on our side.