The Washington Post is tracking the turnout for the presidential primaries and according to their calculations, one million more Republicans than Democrats have turned out to vote in the 2016 primaries.
Starting with Iowa, where “it became very clear that people coming out to vote for Republicans were turning out much more heavily,” the Post has been watching which party is demonstrating its enthusiasm at the voting booth.
On Super Tuesday, that trend continued, for the most part. In the Nevada caucuses, more Democrats came out this year, as they did in the Massachusetts and Vermont primaries. Otherwise, Republican turnout was larger — often much larger. In fact … 1.1 million more Republicans have voted than Democrats.
Here is the WaPo’s chart measuring the turnout discrepancy:
In some of those states, there are simply more Democrats than Republican, like in Massachusetts. Nevertheless, “turnout is down for the Democrats since their last contested nomination (2008) and it’s up for the Republicans (2012). Across the board.”
Perhaps this is because the Democrats seem to have an “uncontested” nominee in Hillary, while the Republicans are still fighting over who their selection will be. Let’s see if this trend continues with the upcoming primary elections or whether voters on the right decide they too have an “uncontested” nominee in Trump.
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