Democratic turnout seen so-so, despite party assertions

WASHINGTON -- Turnout in the Democratic primaries, heralded by party leaders as a strong showing of unity and outrage against President Bush, was actually in line with past primaries, lower than many recent Republican contests, and included some record lows in later states, according to a full accounting released yesterday.

At the height of this year's presidential primaries, on Feb. 20, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe declared that "people are turning out in record numbers" -- even though in the Virginia primary 10 days earlier, the 7.5 percent of Democrats who voted failed to match the only previous Democratic primary, and the figure was well below the 13.2 percent of Republicans who voted in their party's 2000 primary.

Only New Hampshire and Wisconsin saw truly impressive increases, according to Curtis Gans, who conducted the survey for the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

That may bode well for Democrats in the general election, given that both are important battleground states, but the lack of significant improvement elsewhere could signal that Democrats are not quite as mobilized as party officials once proclaimed.

"Democratic turnout in the party's presidential primaries through Super Tuesday was generally low -- in the aggregate, the third-lowest on record," Gans said.

Democratic officials insist the data should be read differently. In an era of decreasing voter turnout, they argue, several swing states -- especially New Hampshire, Iowa, and Wisconsin -- saw numbers that held firm or increased somewhat. And party leaders refused to back away from their insistence that the primary turnout reflected growing momentum.

"Regardless of which study you look at, it is very encouraging to see that there is a call for change among Democrats," Democratic strategist Jenny Backus said. A spokesman for McAuliffe, Tony Welch, said that compared to typical data in national elections, "Democrats were more enthused, more energetic than anyone can remember in recent history."

Some of the lower-turnout states were later in the primary process, they said, when voters may have concluded the nomination would go to Senator John F. Kerry after his victories in Wisconsin, Virginia, and Tennessee.

Meanwhile, earlier states saw greater numbers, in part because so much money and time were poured into those races and the nomination, at that point, truly appeared to be a free-for-all. According to Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver, that was especially true in his state's caucuses -- at least by his method of calculation. The number who voted in the Democratic race doubled from the last election cycle, to approximately 125,000 voters in this year's caucuses.

"It's pretty impressive, when you really consider what we were asking people to do on a cold winter night," Culver said. "We set an all-time record for an Iowa caucus -- at least since we really started keeping numbers, prior to 2000."

But about the same number went to the polls in the 1988 caucuses, undermining the argument that this year's was really a record-setter. Indeed, whether the votes were record highs or lackluster seems to be largely in the eye of the beholder: states that saw "record" increases had in some cases only had one or two primaries ever before.

One such example is South Carolina, which Democrats this year claimed as a huge triumph after drawing 9.49 percent of party voters to the polls, up from 4.44 percent in 1992.

But by a different measure, turnout there, the third state to hold a contest, was mediocre at best. The "record" number of voters was almost inevitable given that South Carolina has only held one other Democratic primary. And Republicans appear to have a sizable edge in turnout: About 19.5 percent voted in the 2000 Republican primary and 9.95 percent voted in the same contest in 1996.

Apart from New Hampshire, Gans said, "Other states could claim `records' but those claims are somewhat specious," arguing that like South Carolina, Arizona and Delaware also made shallow claims of shattering past records by comparing 2004 with uncontested races or only one prior race.

In New York, on the other hand, the Super Tuesday primary on March 2 marked a historic low: just 5.39 percent showed up to vote in the Democratic primary, down from 7.40 percent in the 2000 race between Al Gore and Bill Bradley. In Massachusetts, Republican participation plummeted this year, understandably, given that Bush has no competition on the GOP ballot. Democrats voted at a rate of 13.65 percent, up from 12.55 percent in 2000, but down from the 17.99 percent who voted in 1992 and the record 22.24 percent who voted in 1980.