The Minnesota Democrats (DFL - Democratic farmer Labor Party) outdrew the state Republicans at the Feb. 4th caucuses, roughly 14,500 to 14,100. That's actually a big deal. If you're shrugging at that because there are more Democrats, so they should have a bit bigger turnout, not really. Yes, there are more Democrats, but what draws people to caucuses are contests for public office. Caucuses, at least on the DFL side, also elect precinct officers and start the process of building the party platform --- and I'm a big believer in face time for building a strong grassroots, as are apparently other people who turned out without a high profile contest. Still, let's admit it, attendance tends to rise or fall with the contests for public office. That's why the MNGOP should have had much higher turnout than us. To clarify, in Minnesota, precinct caucuses elect delegates to local conventions, and those conventions elect delegates to the state convention, which endorses candidates for statewide office.
The DFL currently holds every statewide office, and all are up for reelection except Amy Klobuchar's US Senate seat. The incumbents are running unopposed except Mark Ritchie, who isn't seeking reelection as secretary of state. So we do have a contest between two strong campaigns for state reps. Steve Simon and Debra Hilstrom, and they did their best to get supporters to turn out. But still, that's just secretary of state, which matters when a partisan SOS is trying to interfere with voting instead facilitating it, but it doesn't get many people excited. Besides, the GOP has a contest for SOS too, and for everything else, including governor and US Senator.
As if that weren't enough, Republicans have more contests for Congress, and I'm presuming they have more State House races since they have a minority of seats going in. Now add in that the non-presidential party is generally more motivated in midterm elections, and everything points to much higher turnout for the MNGOP. So even for the DFL to be close is really surprising.
What does it mean? I can only speculate, but none of my guesses are bad for the blue. Maybe contrary to history and reasonable expectation, Democratic enthusiasm is much higher this year. Here's hoping that's true and applies nationally, because that's big for turnout, both for voters and the volunteers who turn out the voters. Maybe DFLers like their odds of winning, which only helps morale, while Republicans feel discouraged about their candidates, at least at the top of the ticket. I actually doubt DFLers are really liking our odds because we are frequently reminding ourselves that Gov. Mark Dayton and US Sen. Al Franken needed recounts to win, and plenty of us repeat that nonsense about second midterms being even worse than first midterms. Yes, I said nonsense. Go over the record of midterms. Every multi-term president suffers a shellacking in a midterm, but it's as likely to be the first as the second. It stands to reason that you have to hold a lot to lose a lot, and we hold a whole lot less than in 2010, so we can't lose much even in a second red wave. Still, that's the belief, so DFLers are actually pretty worried about the statewide races and the State House majority.
To speculate further, the better turnout might be about the DFL ground game. I mean both in terms of using it to pump turnout for caucuses, and using the caucuses to build a volunteer base. Safe DFL incumbents worked at caucus turnout as if they were fighting for their political lives. I have a theory I suspect many of them share, that safe incumbents who act safe attract the intraparty challengers who make them unsafe. Though it's possible they were just looking toward volunteer recruitment in the general election. As an senate district chair (full disclosure, I'm the DFL chair in SD63) who ran caucuses this year, I can say that building the volunteer base was my concern second only to logistics.
Or maybe safe incumbents just want their campaign staffs trained now instead of feeling their way when Labor Day is over. In sports terms, call it the election pre-season. Now that I write this, I need to ask them.
A bit of thinking aloud, and seriously, I thought this would be a two paragraph post when I started typing, though I'm giving credit to campaigns, the state DFL and local parties work pretty hard at turnout. So let's take some credit too. I'm not saying Republicans don't work at it. I don't presume to know what they do to encourage turnout. I can merely attest that the DFL at all levels puts in a lot of work on caucuses, and maybe turnout just means we're currently better at that then Republicans.
Like I said to start, though I don't really know why the DFL outdrew the MNGOP when it had no business doing so, none of the possible reasons why are bad for the DFL. The one bad spin I'll put on this is we still haven't solved the problem of turnout dropping in non-presidential years. Yes, we know why it drops, but how to prevent that still eludes. Democrats, if we want to win, we have to figure that out.