Florida has a seriously contested governor’s race this year — the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows Republican incumbent Rick Scott leading 43.5 percent to 42.5 percent over Democrat (and former Republican Governor) Charlie Crist — and I thought it might be revealing to compare the turnout in yesterday’s Republican and Democratic primaries, in which each candidate had one little-known opponent.
The official results, as I write, show 952,013 votes cast in the Republican primary and 837,720 votes cast in the Democratic primary. The 834,395 votes cast for Scott in the Republican primary fall just short of the total votes in the Democratic primary. And this despite the fact that primary voting is limited to those registered in each party and, again according to official figures, there are more registered Democrats (4,599,326) than registered Republicans (4,144,186). So registered Republicans outvoted registered Democrats, even though they are significantly outnumbered by them. A good sign for Republican turnout in November, no?
