Just fiddling with some numbers this morning. The following is not an 🍎s to 🍎s comparison since 2016 had no incumbent in the NH primaries and both parties had contested elections. That being said, I still find some of this interesting.
The Dem turnout for the 2020 primary looks like it could be about 40,000 votes higher than 2016. (288500 vs 247500). However, the CBS exit poll said that only 50% were democrats, 47% were independents and 3% were Republican.
I have no idea what the breakdown was in 2016 but since both races were contested I'll assume that the right leaning people voted in the gop primary and the left leaning people voted in the Dem primary.
The number that really pops out is that turnout as a whole was Down in 2020 by about 120,000 votes. This could be because while President Trump did have an opponent in Gov. Weld it really wasn't contested.
President Trump also mentioned in his rally Monday that maybe his supporters would cross over and vote for the weakest Dem candidate. While this might have boosted the Dem primary turnout, we don't know. We do know based on exit polls that about 8500 GOP voted in Dem primary.
The news is reporting that the Dem party turnout was around 2008 levels but again that's not a good comparison since in 2008 you had two contested elections. Which would make the 2008 showing much bigger than the 2020 showing as there could be assumed less cross over in 2008
NH has 276,385 registered dems.
If the exit polls are correct that means about 51% of the Dems voted in the primary. That's a pretty good turn out for a primary.
If we assume that most of those voting in the GOP primaries were GOP votes and
If the exit polls are correct that means about 51% of the Dems voted in the primary. That's a pretty good turn out for a primary.
If we assume that most of those voting in the GOP primaries were GOP votes and
Knowing that NH has 288,464 Registered Republicans that means at most 46% of Republicans voted. (It's probably a lower % since there was probably some independents that voted) still pretty good turnout numbers either way,add in the 8500 that voted in Dem primary at it's about 50%
Main point of all this is that there was about a 22% drop in total turnout from 2016 levels most likely because one of the two elections was not contested in any meaningful way. The Dem turnout was good compared to 2016 but was probably bumped by non contested GOP race.
Iowa saw lower turnout for the Dems so with two datapoints it's still too early to tell much about voter enthusiasm. President Trump did get a big turnout for an incumbent president. The best in history.
A final nugget is that NH has 415,871 "undeclared" registered voters. Per the CBS exit polls 47% of independents voted in contested Dem primary that's about 132.6k. I don't know the historic voting trends for the NH undeclared/ind in dem primaries but that seems low about ~32%
If the Dems can only get 1/3rd of the independents interested in their primary that seems like a danger signal to me, but as I've said, I don't know enough about the historic voting patterns to make a declarative statement on it.
The fake media won't explain any of this too you. They will push the talking point that the Dems had a high turnout and why that's bad for Trump. I doubt they will tell you the rest of the story. It's a good turnout for the Dems, regardless, but not much can be drawn from it.
Turnout on the Dem side will be interesting to watch going forward, especially in closed primary/caucus contests. The NV closed caucus later this month should give us a better picture, the SC open primary not so much.
