Here’s a way of thinking about turnout in Super Tuesday primary states: compare what % of primary voters on Tuesday were Republican compared to what % of general election voters in November of 2012 voted for Romney. For example, in Alabama, 68% of the voters on Tuesday who cast ballots did so in the Republican primary, while 61% of all voters in November 2012 voted for Romney.
So Republicans did better in 6 of the 10 states that held contests on Tuesday for both parties. Five of the six were states that voted Republican in 2012, the exception being Virginia (where Trump narrowly beat Rubio).
Trump looks like he’d have no problem winning the always-Republican deep south states in the fall. But Trump’s big victory in the GOP primary in Massachusetts was a tempest in a teapot: Democrats outvoted Republicans almost 2 to 1 in MA on Tuesday.
The turnout statistics suggest that Cruz’s big victory in his home state of Texas was indeed impressive, but his mojo didn’t really extend to Oklahoma. While Cruz won there, GOP turnout was mediocre by the high standards of OK.
Rubio’s one victory, Minnesota, looks hollow because Republicans only accounted for 37% of the participants there on Tuesday.
On the other hand, Democratic turnout was boosted in MA, OK, and MN by Bernie Sanders supporters.
In the four states where Democrats did better than or as well as Republicans in 2016 relative to 2012, Bernie Sanders won three (MN, OK, and VT) and came close in Massachusetts. Even as he seems to be sinking beneath the waves overall, Bernie remains the engine of Democratic enthusiasm.
Hillary had a good day piling up delegates, but she didn’t generate much excitement among Democrats in the states where she cruised to victory by getting her core loyalists to dutifully turn out.
The early word is that Hill and Bill, realizing they don’t have much to say for themselves, are planning to run a negative, ugly campaign against Donald Trump, with lots of charges of sexism and racism.
So we’ve got that to look forward to.
Meanwhile, the exit polls show the Democrats are suffering a gender gap, with poor turnout among men. In the 9 states with exit poll data, the Democrats had an average of 42% male voters, compared to a better balanced 51% male among Republicans. (All averages equally weighting each state.)
Averaging each state, Trump won 41% of the GOP men and 33% of the GOP women, while Rubio earned 20% of the men and 25% of the women. Cruz’s vote was balanced between men (24%) and women (23%).
The Democratic candidates have big gender gaps with Hillary crushing Bernie 63-36 among women, but only 52-46 among men. In Massachusetts, Bernie won 58-42 among men (while losing 57-41 among women), but men made up only 42% of Democratic voters. So the BernieBros phenomenon is real … but limited in scope.
It’s likely that Hillary’s victories in Southern states stemmed from the demographic that did so much for Obama in 2012 relative to 2008: the older black ladies who took up the slack when the cooler demographics of 2008 forgot to show up at the polls in the same numbers in 2012. Black church ladies are a respectable demographic, but how fashionable are they?
The concept of the “gender gap” is traditionally conceived of by the media as a problem for Republicans. But, you know, they still count men’s votes. Maybe in the future they’ll finally do something to rectify centuries of patriarchy, such as disenfranchising old white men, like they’re trying to do with Oscars voting (although they will probably end up disenfranchising actresses because SJW projects are big on unintended consequences, like Black Lives Matter getting hundreds more blacks murdered by other blacks).
But, I dunno, I kind of don’t envy the Democrats running a lady whom even Democratic men have a hard time getting enthusiastic about.
Granted, I realize that we are all supposed to be excited over the historic election of Mrs. Bill Clinton only 50 years after a term-limited George Wallace got his wife Lurleen Wallace elected governor of Alabama.
What? You’re not enthralled? What kind of sexist are you?
Apparently, according to the early word out of Chappaqua, we’re going to be discussing at vast length just what kind of sexist you are all fall. And what kind of racist you are, too. Sounds exciting, huh?
