By this point in the election cycle, we have heard the following meme recycled in the press so often we could recite by rote:
"The Republican Party is energized this year! They'd crawl on their belies over busted glass to vote! The Democrats, on the other hand, are depressed. And that is why the GOP will pick up x seats in the House and y seats in the Senate."
Now that we have some hard data to chew on from last night, there are some conclusions that can be drawn. And the main one is that while there is noticeable bump in GOP participation in this cycle, there is, to some degree, a corresponding bump on the Democratic side.
Look at Pennsylvania, for example. Voter registration statistics tell us that if you just take the two major parties, Democrats make up 58% of the registered voters in the state. Last night's turnout (which, of course, will change ever so slightly as a smattering of precincts adjust their numbers) saw an electorate that was 55% Democratic, and 45% Republican.
That means while Republicans were over-represented last night in the Keystone State, it was not dramaticallly so.
Of course, it is fair to point out that the higher-profile races were on the Democratic side, to be sure.
The opposite, however, was true in Oregon. All the competitive races were on the Republican side, and yet, in raw numbers, turnout increased for Democrats in Oregon between 2006 to 2010, while the GOP turnout stayed basically constant.
In 2006, the gap between the two parties in terms of primary election turnout was around 15,000 votes (source for this data here (PDF File). Last night (thus far, as votes take a while to be counted in Oregon), the difference in voter turnout between parties shows a Democratic edge of over 60,000 votes.
When measured as a percentage of registration, the GOP had a higher turnout (48-44). But that, in itself, is not unusual. The Republican turnout for primary elections, since 1964, has been higher than the corresponding Democratic turnout 19 out of 24 times.
Indeed, measuring as a percentage of registration, as is often done, penalizes Democrats, who made huge gains in voter registration over the last half decade (particularly, of course, in the 2008 cycle). Take Oregon, for example. In 2006, the two-party split in voter registration was 52-48 Democratic. By 2010, it was 57-43 Democratic.
Therefore, even if the turnouts (as a percentage of registration) seem muted, it is only because there is, in many cases, a substantially larger universe of Democratic voters.
The one exception to this rule last night was Kentucky where Republican turnout, by percentage, was higher than Democratic turnout for the first time since 1982. However, that can be attributed, at least in part, to the intense media attention on the Paul-Grayson race, more intense than the considerably more competitive Democratic Senate primary between Conway and Mongiardo.
Just the same, in raw numbers, Democratic turnout in the red states of Kentucky and Arkansas were among the highest recorded in recent years, with Arkansas even outstripping the Dem primary turnout in the 2008 presidential year.
It might not be fair to call it a reason for optimism about November (there is still much, much more to be done). But it would be fair to say that it ought to temper much of the pervasive pessimism about November.