Nothing Suppressed About This
More than 356,000 people voted in the Tuesday Iowa primary election…the second highest turnout since 1994, which as you may recall from the Iowa Almanac story we did that date, was when Terry Branstad was challenged by Fred Grandy for governor.
More than 73,000 Iowans voted by absentee ballot…either by mail or early in person…and that’s the second highest total for a primary election in Iowa history.
On the Republican ballot, there were some interesting statehouse races, including successful challenges to incumbents and some districts where two incumbents faced one another, due to redistricting. If you were in the third congressional district, you had quite a race…but other than a close auditor’s contest, the Republican ballot was really not all that interesting…certainly not in contrast to the Democrat ballot, which had the marquee race, a three-way contest for the U.S. Senate nomination.
And yet…195,355 Republicans voted, compared with only 156,589 Democrats. Republicans do outnumber Democrats in straight voter registration totals, by about 60,000 people, so I suppose the fact that more Republicans turned out make sense…but again, with that big race on the ballot, only a quarter of active registered Democrats bothered to vote Tuesday?
From a strategy standpoint, that’s pretty important as the parties each focus on the general election, when the more than 578,000 of us who are registered “no party” voters get to weigh in.
Also important…with all the changes in voting laws—from shorter hours, smaller early voting window, voter ID–all the ones that naysayers claimed were nothing more than voter suppression moves…why was turnout the highest in nearly two generations? Still seems pretty easy to cast a ballot to me…that is, a legal and fair ballot.
