It’s early, and anything can happen.
The sky could rain bullet ants until we’re all lifeless, swollen lumps of histamine and protoplasm.
Jesus could return on his pterodactyl and Leeeroy Jenkins the F out of Capitol Hill until there’s nothing left but docents, pages, and soulless, hollowed-out lobbyist husks (also known as “lobbyists”).
Canada could get fed up and beat us all to death with hockey sticks in the middle of the night while they’re off work for their fake Thanksgiving. (Just kidding. We love you Canucks. After all, you’re the only sane people left north of the Mexican border.)
Donald Trump could become presidential. (Ha ha. Okay, that one’s just ridiculous.)
But even if none of those things happen, we have a great chance of getting rid of the Republican stranglehold on our government in November.
The Pew Research Center recently released a study comparing Democratic and Republican primary turnout this year with that of 2014, when Republicans eye-gouged Democrats all night long on Election Day.
Seems that Democratic turnout is way up compared to 2014, and is also outpacing GOP turnout by leaps and bounds.
The most striking example is Iowa, where Democratic turnout has more than doubled and GOP turnout is actually down from 2014:
From NBC News:
Of all the numbers here, Iowa’s may be the most interesting. The Democrats saw a big increase in their House primary vote in the state, while Republicans saw a steep drop. Some of that undoubtedly had to do with the lack of contested races on the Republican side of the slate, but the numbers are still remarkable.
Overall, 110,000 more people voted in the Democratic primaries in 2018 than in 2014 — a 152 percent increase. Meanwhile, 57,000 fewer people voted in the state’s Republican House primaries this year than did four years ago.
And the lack of contested races doesn’t explain all of the drop-off. For instance, in Iowa’s 2nd District, where both the Democrat and Republican were unopposed, the Democratic primary increased by 27,000 voters, while the Republicans had a decline of more than 8,000.
That difference in enthusiasm could spell trouble for Republicans in two House seats currently rated as tossups by the Cook Political Report. In both those races, which were contested on the Democratic side and not on the Republican side, Democratic turnout was up sharply compared to 2014.
Meanwhile, the national numbers are similarly eye-popping:
The Pew analysis found that through June, 13.6 million people had voted in Democratic House primaries in 2018. The number was 7.4 million in 2014, the last midterm election. The 2018 figure represents an 84 percent increase over 2014.
The Republican House primary vote has climbed as well in 2018, but not by the same amount. Thus far about 10.7 million votes have been cast in GOP House primaries, compared to 8.6 million in 2014. That’s a bump of about 24 percent.
There are some caveats to consider, of course. But overall, it’s shaping up to be a blockbuster year for Dems:
To be clear, primary votes are often very different animals than general elections. Primaries are sometimes driven by intra-party competition. But the numbers at least provide a rudimentary measure of how engaged voters are.
And the House primary numbers not only show a bigger Democratic bump, they show that more people have voted in Democratic House primaries than Republican House primaries in 2018 — flipping the script from 2014. (The same 31 states will have voted in both years.)
None of this matters, of course, if we don’t get off our asses in November ... and encourage any and all fence-sitters to do likewise.
Remember how you felt on November 8, 2016? Do you want to feel that way again?
Of course you don’t.
#Vote
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