Turnout by Precincts

I think there will be a lot of political geeks with dark eye shades pouring over these numbers checking  for tidbits of information that they can use in the general election, were are we meeting?

Republicans leaving the Republican  Party?

Rats leaving a sinking ship?

Last Presidential election, Kerry had the nomination (everyone else had dropped out) by the time the IL primary rolled around. There literally was no reason to bother to vote. This time, it mattered. Could that be one reason for the high Dem turnout?

You think the Dem turnout was good yesterday, wait until November.  Given 1)"W" seven years of 'big' govenment,, 2) Iraq-no end in sight, 3) Economic downturn & 4) non-unifying GOP canidate for President.

I don't get to do this very often, so you'll perhaps forgive me if I draw attention to a prediction of mine on Pundit from January 28, where I said that I would not be surprised if we set a new record for Dem turnout.  In all fairness, I didn't ever expect that the new record would be so much higher than previous marks.  I was thinking of somewhere in the 18,000 to 20,000 range.  23,000+ is just nuts.

I strongly disagree with the assertion that campus turnout was not high. Was Democratic turnout in campus precincts lower than it was in southwest Champaign precincts or faculty ghetto precincts? Sure. It always is in primary elections, but raw turnout numbers are not the best way to judge campus turnout. A better way to evaluate campus turnout is by comparing this election to the previous presidential election year, 2004. Democratic turnout this year exceeded the 2004 turnout in ALL TEN CAMPUS PRECINCTS. In 4 of the campus precincts the turnout was DOUBLE what it was in 2004: City of Champaign 5 (the six pack), City of Champaign 7 (mostly apartments and fraternity/sorority houses), Cunningham 3 (Illinois Street Residence Hall), and Cunningham 5 (Pennsylvania Avenue and Florida Avenue Residence Halls).

Percentage of registered voters casting ballots is never a very accurate gauge of campus turnout because the voter rolls in campus precincts always include hundreds of students who have already graduated but haven't been purged yet. If you want a better estimate of turnout percentage in the campus precincts, look at the number of voters in those precincts who filled out a voter registration form between August of 2007 and January of 2008 (this includes student voters who were just changing their address). That number is 2,243. If you divide the number of Democratic voters in the ten campus precincts yesterday (1,825) by 2,243 you get an estimated turnout percentage of 81.4%

Justin:  I haven't had a chance to compare Tuesday's numbers to 2004 in detail, but your comments about the student precincts resonate on a couple of levels.

This reminds me quite a bit of the nationwide analyses after the 2004 general election.  Because the percentage of young voters that year in relation to the total votes overall was not significantly changed from previous cycles, some national pundits tried to claim that young people had once again failed to come out.  In fact, the number of young voters had increased by an incredible amount, but this was partially obscured by the increases in every demographic category that year.

Your accounting of recent registers also agrees substantially with turnout percentages I first observed when analyzing county voter demographics from the 1996 election in preparation for the 2000 campaign.

To be fair, I don't think that Mark and others were necessarily saying that turnout this year on campus hadn't increased overall, but rather that it hadn't increased as much as they thought it might, compared to the rest of the county.  As is so often the case in elections, expectations can frequently make it all relative, and in this case I think that many of us were anticipating a bigger spike on campus than in other precincts.  I'm not sure that anyone expected the full magnitude of the increases across the board countywide.