Voter turnout

It should be a large turnout for Democrats (especially all those newly registered Democrats) in the May primary. For the Republicans, not so much.

Statewide, the exciting races are on the Democratic ballot. However, we’ll see what happens in the fifth congressional district where Mike Erickson and Kevin Mannix have done their best to make Republicans know there is a competitive contest.

We won’t know the party breakdowns of participating voters for a few days. However, here’s what I think will happen: Democrats probably get 60–65% turnout. Republicans probably in the 50–55% range. Overall turnout somewhere between 55–60%. All this is based on historical trends, watching the patterns of returned ballots, and anecdotal evidence from around the state on the effect of political advertising, reports of political conversations among people, and the amount of money candidates are spending.

An interesting tidbit, the highest turnout in this record-breaking presidential primary season was New Hampshire’s 53%. Oregon will better that, but be far below our records—set in the 1960s—of almost 75% turnout.

All this turnout means that local districts that decided to put property tax measures on the May ballot will meet the 50% turnout requirement for their elections.

Something we’ll be watching carefully, how does a large Democratic turnout influence non-partisan races? For example, in Eugene the mayoral race pits the incumbent, Kitty Piercy, against her immediate predecessor, Jim Torrey. She’s a liberal Democrat. He’s a fiscal conservative Republican. With all the newly registered Democratic voters in Eugene (and one would think most of them are U of O students, probably Obama supporters), the presidential primary could be the most important dynamic in the mayoral election. Will those new voters read the Voter’s Pamphlet and go with Piercy? Will they simply not vote once they get to the other races on the ballot (probably everything below the U.S. Senate race)? All I know is that if I were advising either Piercy or Torrey, I’d point out that there a lot of unknowns in predicting this election.