Study: Democratic turnout for primaries lowest in 80 years
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For the first time since 1930, more Republican voters showed up to vote in statewide primaries this year than Democrats -- another sign of the huge challenges facing President Obama's party in this year's elections.
The new figures come from a just-released report by voter turnout expert Curtis Gans of American University.
Gans looked at 35 primaries held before Sept. 1 and found that 4 million more Republicans voted than Democrats -- statistical proof of the "enthusiasm gap" that pollsters and pundits have been talking about.
That, combined with the fact that the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats has been on a steady decline for decades, spells big trouble for the president's party, Gans said: "The Democrats are at an enormous disadvantage."
This comes after the 2008 election, when all the energy was on the Democratic side. But Gans said he's seen those kinds of turnaround in voter sentiment before. The last time was between the 1992 election when Bill Clinton won the White House and the midterm contests two years later that booted Democrats from power on Capitol Hill.
"This is precisely the kind of disillusion that brought the Democrats down in 1994," Gans said. He blamed the faltering economy for the latest numbers. "What the last 16 months have done is rob the public of the hope that was engendered in 2008," he said.
(Posted by Kathy Kiely)
