Senate 7 Primary vs General Election Turnout
Brian compared the turnout in the State Senate District 7 Primary Election to the turnout in the General Election. Here are the results:
Really, the Dems did a better job relative to the primary than the GOP. 117% increase vs. 103% increase for the good guys. Looking at the percent of votes going to each party at each precinct the Dems increased at 29 and GOP increased at only 17 with no change at the rest. There was no more than an 8 point party swing at any box with over 100 votes. The summer break at A&M hurt Hall. Turnout doubled at most precincts, but only rose by 16% there. Probably cost her 170 votes. Wouldn’t have closed the gap, of course.
The bottom line, as I see it, is that one cannot look at the voting data and ascertain any real differences in voting based on race/geography from the primary to the general. Both the Dems and GOP roughly doubled their turn out. Hard to claim to see any racial/geographic divide that wasn’t already present. The good news for GOP is that despite having a wide open primary it looks like all voters coalesced behind the nominee.
Most every poll had double the turn out. Remarkably consistent.
So, the Democrat’s Get Out The Vote (GOTV) efforts appear to have been successful. The “I voted” stickers on tombstones around the County are proof of that (it’s a joke but what makes it funny is the history / current practice of Democratic Party electoral shenanigans).
In another post we’ll look at cost per vote, also known as Teachers having their AEA dues spent on ‘paid volunteers’ and robocalls for the Democrats.
FYI the AEA spends about $3,000,000 on political campaigns, almost every bit of it to Democratic Party candidates (AEA’s Paul Hubbert is also vice-chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party). I say almost every bit of it because last year the AEA appears to have spent about half a million dollars trying to “hijack” the Republican Primary for the State School Board (e.g., Smithwick).
Teachers – is that how you want your AEA dues spent - subverting the political process in Alabama?
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React your dead on with the graveyard joke. Its well known that Ophelia Ford made dead people rise from their graves in Memphis and go vote for her back in ‘05 when she got elected to the state senate. You got to love the dems though. I remember getting up early on election day and going to the democrat party headquarters with my dad in the 80’s and 90’s. They’d have trucks loaded down with beer and whiskey and the local KFC owner would be there cooking chicken in a tractor trailer. We’d go out and pick up the black men and women and take them to vote and we’d bring them back by the headquarters. They’d get a snack pack and a bottle of whiskey or beer and then we’d take them back home. Dad would get paid about $100 for the day. We had so much fried chicken left over one time we took it home. Lets just say I ate so much of it that I didnt start eating chicken again until two years ago.