Primary Turnout

Election 2016           Forecast / Turnout and Result:  Primary Turnout

Of course primary turnout matters!  This is not the easiest variable to analyze as conditions of each election cycle can seriously modify the validity of primary turnout analysis – but if you make sure to take changes into account, then primary turnout is a very straightforward, obvious, and useful variable to use to help to forecast voter enthusiasm.

There are many analysts who simply dismiss primary turnout because they say it has not worked well in forecasting an election winner.  Frankly, they are mixing apples and oranges and unknowingly highlight one of the major problems with analysts – they focus too much on mathematics and not enough on common sense or perhaps better put, they focus on math at the expense of actually understanding the issue at hand.

For analysis of primaries you cannot mix elections that have an incumbent with those that do not.  An incumbent candidate will receive a relatively low number of votes during the primaries.  This has far less to say about the candidate or the enthusiasm of the party than the nomination process itself.  Parties almost universally rally around the incumbent making the nomination process more a formality.  In other words, there is very low voter turnout for an incumbent during the primaries.  Then, during the general election, incumbents have an advantage in re-election, so you get a situation where the incumbent normally gets fewer votes during the primaries (due to the process not due to the candidate) and then normally wins the election.  Mathematicians or analysts might look at this and shrug their shoulders saying that you cannot use this data or that it makes no sense.

In order to use the primary turnout data, we simply have to compare apples to apples.  In this case, we need to compare elections without incumbents to each other.  Elections in 2016, 2008, and 2000 did not have incumbents, so we can readily compare them.

Table 1: Comparing Primary Votes for the 2000, 2008, and 2016 US Presidential Elections

Source:  Rasmussen Reports, Wikipedia

Note: the May 2016 data is highlighted as it shows around when Cruz and Kasich dropped out of the race.  After this point, the Republican race was essentially decided whereas the Democratic race continued to be competitive – meaning in relative terms Democrats would likely receive more votes after this time as their election was still competitive.  In general, it seems to make more sense to compare data from May 2016.

In the 2000 election, the Republicans received a greater number of primary votes.  And in the general election, the Republicans won a very tight race.  In 2008, the Democrats received many more votes during the primaries.  In fact, the Democrats broke records that year with voter turnout during the primaries.  Obama ended up winning in 2008 by a good margin while producing the highest voter turnout since the 1960s.  In both of these cases, primary votes tend to help explain the result in the general election.

Similarly to these cases, 2016 does not have an incumbent running.  Though not perfect, we can compare the current election cycle to these previous elections.  It should be noted that for some reason, Democratic turnout tends to be higher than that of Republicans during the primaries.  For instance, the number of primary votes for the Republicans in 2016 hit a party record and was an astonishing 50% above its previous record.  In comparison, the Democrats exceeded their previous record in 2008 by a 60% margin.  In general terms, the Republicans appear to be experiencing a similar type of enthusiasm as the Democrats in 2008, judging purely from primary turnout.

Yes, the Democrats broke their record by a higher margin however once you consider that Cruz, Trump’s main rival, dropped out of the race on May 3, 2016 whereas Hillary Clinton, Obama’s main rival in 2008, dropped out on June 7, 2008, we can note that the Democrats had a full month more of a competitive race which would naturally translate into higher primary votes.  By making even small adjustments to equal the playing field, the Republican primary turnout of 2016 appears equivalent to the Democratic primary turnout of 2008 in terms of showing enthusiasm within the respective party.

The 2016 Democratic primary vote tally is by historical standards high, there is no doubt.  It is in fact the second highest behind the 2008 turnout.  However, though high by historical standards, it was still below that of the Republicans.  Additionally, it would have sent a significant signal for the enthusiasm of the party if it would have exceeded that of 2008.  After all Obama generated major excitement as the first non-white nominee, so it would hold that Clinton could generate equal or more excitement as the first non-male nominee.  Not having reached the same level of primary votes, we can conclude that the Democratic enthusiasm for Clinton is not as high as that for Obama in 2008.

Taking the analysis one step further, as judged purely from primary votes, if the 2016 Republican level of enthusiasm appears more or less on par with that of the Democrats in 2008 but the 2016 Democrats appears lower than that of Democrats in 2008, it could be a harbinger of bad news for the Democrats this year in the general election.