Massachusetts Presidential primary participation, 2008 vs 2016:
- 1.256M Democratic ballots cast.
- 499k Republican ballots cast.
2016 Results with 99.95% of precincts counted
That’s a record turnout. The previous high for a Presidential primary was 2008. What gets me is the nature of the change from 2008: a 4% decrease in Democratic ballots and a 26% increase in Republican ballots. The latter increase is huge. Massachusetts has an open primary, meaning independent (“unenrolled”) voters can pick up a ballot for either primary. There are 4.27M registered voters in MA: 35% are Democrats, 10% Republicans, and 53% are unenrolled. My guess is that the jump in Republican numbers isn’t due to a huge turnout among registered Republicans. 163k more people voted in the Republican primary than there are registered Republicans so clearly a lot of unenrolled voters picked up a Republican ballot. (That brings to mind the saying “‘Unenrolled’ is just a euphemism for ‘Republican with a sense of shame’.”) I’d hoped that a lot more unenrolled voters would pick up a Democratic ballot to vote for Sanders. Sanders lost by slightly more than 17k votes, about 1/8th of the overall increase in Republican participation. That’s disappointing. There was a political revolution last night, but definitely not the one I was hoping for.
UPDATE 3/3/2016
The exit polls in Massachusetts, which Clinton won narrowly, are fascinating. Here are some highlights:
- Sanders got 41 percent of non-white voters (they don’t break down the category further). I want to come back to this.
- Sanders beat Clinton among voters making under $50,000, and voters making between $50,000 and $100,000. The only income group she won was voters making over $100,000.
- Among first-time voters, Sanders got a whopping 71 percent of the vote.
- Among independents, Sanders got 65 percent of the votes.
- Sanders won among very liberal voters and moderate voters.
- Clinton did better among married women than she did among unmarried women.
That’s both encouraging and discouraging. Per Item 4, if 60,000 more independents had picked up a Democratic ballot than a Republican ballot (and the 65 pct support for Sanders held) then Sanders would have won. Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades but he came damn close.