Turnout was low at Tuesday’s primaries. Was a bad omen for the GOP, or just another data point with some interesting context?
Bad Omen: Michael Brodkorb at Politics.mn throws up a warning sign:
Back in February, in my pre-precinct caucus primer, I encouraged people to compare the number of total attendees at precinct caucuses for the DFL and GOP. If the numbers were close, I wrote this could be a sign of malaise amongst Republican activists. Even with multiple candidates not abiding by the Republican Party of Minnesota’s endorsement for statewide offices, Republicans should have more attendees at their precinct caucuses. But they didn’t.
At the time of precinct caucuses, the Minnesota DFL has only one contested statewide race, as Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is not seeking re-election. Governor Mark Dayton and U.S. Senator Al Franken faced no opposition within the DFL Party. There were also 12 Republican statewide campaigns – six for governor and six for the U.S. Senate. Republicans also had contested endorsement races in the 6th, 2nd, and 1st Congressional Districts of Minnesota. The battles between the Republicans candidates for congress and statewide office should have encouraged more participation by Republicans on the night of precinct caucuses than Democrats. But the Minnesota DFL won the night. This should be a warning sign for Republicans.
Michael’s knows his politics. I’d be hard-pressed to argue, much. But to play devil’s advocate – what percentage of the state’s total population is “the GOP base” that turns out for primaries?
And among those who are the “soft-core” base – the ones that’ll do primaries, but not usually caucuses? Does a fractious, contentious primary make them more or less likely to come to the polls for a primary?
Finally – there were some crowded races (and at the legislative level, some interesting ones). But one might be forgiven for thinking…:
- the Senate race was a foregone conclusion, and didn’t need any given person’s vote
- in August as in January (at the AM1280/Northeast Metro GOP debate), we had a four-way race among governor candidates who just weren’t all that different. Wonks like Michael and (to some extent) me could tell the difference between Scott Honour and Kurt Zellers. Outside the GOP wonk class?
Again, I’m just devils’ advocatin’.
Interesting Context: On the other hand, Andy Aplikowski at ResFor – a person from whom I’ve learned more about political number-crunching than any single person in the MNGOP – writes:
All the focus on failure is on Republican turnout.
2010 GOP
Candidate Totals
OLE’ SAVIOR AND TODD “ELVIS” ANDERSON 4396
LESLIE DAVIS AND GREGORY K. SODERBERG 8598
BOB CARNEY JR AND WILLIAM MCGAUGHEY 9856
TOM EMMER AND ANNETTE T. MEEKS 107558
Total 130408
2014 GOP
Candidate Totals
MARTY SEIFERT AND PAM MYHRA 38798
KURT ZELLERS AND DEAN SIMPSON 43991
MERRILL ANDERSON AND MARK ANDERSON 7008
JEFF JOHNSON AND BILL KUISLE 55813
SCOTT HONOUR AND KARIN HOUSLEY 38331
Total 183941
Wait, the GOP turned out 53,000 more voters than in 2010.
I think why you see some people trying to paint the narrative of GOP voter apathy is because DFL apathy has reached toxic levels.
2010 DFL
Candidate Totals
MARGARET ANDERSON KELLIHER AND JOHN GUNYOU 175767
PETER IDUSOGIE AND LADY JAYNE FONTAINE 3123
MATT ENTENZA AND ROBYNE ROBINSON 80509
MARK DAYTON AND YVONNE PRETTNER SOLON 182738
Total 442137
2014 DFL Totals
BILL DAHN AND JAMES VIGLIOTTI 4896
LESLIE DAVIS AND GREGORY K. SODERBERG 8529
MARK DAYTON AND TINA SMITH 177737
Total 191162
The DFL saw a 251,000 drop off in voter turnout and barely drew more voters than the GOP in 2014.
To go back to devil’s advocate mode: you can expect a drop-off; in 2010 there was a highly contentious governor’s race on the DFL side. The only real competitive races on the DFL side this time were the State Auditor and the Secretary of State (which we discussed yesterday, and don’t look like good news to the DFL candidate to me).
A drop-off of over half?
My Admittedly Wishful Take: I’m going to hope – and I am admittedly basing this on hope – that the numbers are sign of diminished enthusiasm on the Democrats’ part, and hope that the GOP candidates can appeal to the non-primary-going public this fall.
Which is the big challenge.
I would like to see the primary moved up to June. The goal would be to involve more voters than just the few that attend the caucuses.
If there is malaise in the MN GOP, it’s directly attributable to Brodkorb. Every time he pops his empty head above gutter level, moral takes a dive. Seriously, did the wreck destroy his shame gland completely?
Morale doesn’t respond well either…
Trying to motivate voter turnout in a primary is a bit like a dog chasing it’s tail – he won’t ever catch it, but he’ll never stop trying, either.
We moved the primary to August to stimulate turnout. Even in a high-spending DFL primary four years ago, it didn’t exactly work. We can move the primary to June, or even do away with partisan primaries (ala California or Louisiana’s system) and I doubt we’ll see major differences in turnout.
The overwhelming majority of the electorate simply doesn’t care that passionately about who is the nominee of either party. And if the primary isn’t hotly contested, in the form of major spending or major policy differences, we’ll continue to see a 10-15% maximum turnout.
I’m open to the idea of moving the primary earlier but I agree with First Ringer that it may not make that much of a difference because people – including a lot of party activists – seem to generally be tuned out of politics during the summer months. Although I’m sure this fall they’ll go right back to complaining that they don’t like any of the choices on the ballot.
Mr. Brodkorb remains an insufferable self-aggrandizing jerk. That said, I wish the MNGOP could find some candidates outside the Scandinavian Lutheran investment banker Sunfish Lake belt.
My views of Brodkorb aside–yes, he’s got a bit of the egomaniac about him it seems–I would dare suggest that this may in part represent the method and madness of the Obama wing of the Democratic Party. He appears to have committed a host of impeachable offenses–clear lies about the nature of Benghazi, using the IRS as his personal attack dogs and then refusing to prosecute even the lowest offenders, clear bribes to get Obamacare passed, clear violations of legislative authority in numerous executive orders and the like—and he responds to old scandals with new ones to wear people out. There is simply too much to object to, and we just get tired.
Caucuses are a joke. I’ve been to two in 27 years. Bunch of people I have never seen before. First there were less than 20 in attendance. Mary Jane Rachner (Reagan) was trying to cram through her odd agenda. Last was 6 years ago room was packed with Ron Paul supporters, to accomplish anything resulted in there being very little discussion, just short statements and then votes. Neither experience matches the idealized version that we hear they are supposed to be.
“Caucuses are a joke. I’ve been to two in 27 years. Bunch of people I have never seen before.”
97% of success in life consists in showing up.
Minnesota is becoming a cold Mass. To borrow a phrase from Sid. Republicans haven’t won a State wide race since Pawlenty went green.
Lets take a different look at these numbers using both 2010 elections as a result.
If you assume everybody who voted in the DFL primary in 2010 was going to vote for Dayton he got roughly another 478,000 people to come out and vote for him.
If you assume everybody who voted in the Republican primary in 2010 was going to vote for Emmer he got roughly another 779,000 people to come out and vote for him.
It looks like Randy Johnson has a chance to win easily by over 300,000 votes. And that doesn’t take into account I don’t think the Independence Party has a credible candidate who can get 251,000. Those votes are likely to go to Randy Johnson.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN