Turnout last night is finally being reported www.bustle.com/...: 171,109. This is far lower than 2008’s historic numbers, but a massive improvement over 2012.
Many precincts were delayed in reporting the Democratic caucus results, but early Tuesday morning, the Iowa Democratic Party announced that 171,109 Iowans participated in its caucuses. That's a fall from 2008, which saw 239,000 Iowans vote in the Democratic caucuses throughout the state. 2016, however, is a dramatic improvement to 2012, which saw numbers dwindle to 25,000.
(Note: 2012 Obama ran unopposed, of course.)
I’m hearing a general consensus opinion here that 2016 reflects a low turnout. But, this misses a key point. In 2008, Democratic turnout was massive not only because of Obama, but arguably more because Democrats were eager to take back the White House from a president and Party that wrecked the country — financially and morally. We had been made a global pariah, and Bush was wildly unpopular, even by his own party. You might remember than even McCain ran away from Bush. I’ll make the argument that 2008 was an aberrant year due to all the historic factors. Anti-war sentiment was high, as was anger for the crashing economy. Coupled by Obama’s historic significance, 2008 was the exception.
This year, we have a president and administration still very popular by with the Party and its rank and file. We also have a decent degree of confidence the other side is so crazy, the Presidency is ours to lose.
Let’s look at yesterday compared to other years:
2004 = 124,221 en.wikipedia.org/…
2000 = 60,761 www.gwu.edu/…
Low turnout? I don’t think so. Viewed across historical numbers, turnout was excellent. In fact, excluding 2008 as an outlier, yesterday’s vote at over 171k was almost 150% higher --2.5x -- than the 2000, 2004, 2012 average of almost 70k votes. Even if you control also for the unopposed year of 2012, turnout was almost 2x higher than the average of years 2000 and 2004.