Obama Leads Popular Vote, Turnout Hugely Favors Democrats

A common criticism after Super Tuesday was that Barack Obama's wins were mostly coming from caucus states, and that he wasn't ahead in the meaningful popular vote count from the bigger primary contests.

Well, that's no longer true.

(data sourced from state election sites and New York Times)

The above chart shows most all the primary states so far. Left out are Florida and Michigan because those contests were affected by the Democratic Party edict that their delegates would not be allocated, and Obama and Clinton did not campaign there. Also not included is Washington state where the Democratic primary did not contribute to delegate allocations, and again produced a meaningless contest.

Even if you include Florida and Michigan, as RealClearPolitics does in one of their totals, Obama still has more popular votes than Clinton.

Obama has won all the primaries since Super Tuesday, and by impressive margins. In total he has taken 13 of the 22 contests in the chart. His Illinois margin almost single-handedly makes up for his deficits in California and New York, Clinton's biggest wins.

However, more interesting are the Democratic turnout totals in these 22 states as compared to the Republican races.

Over 8 million more voters cast ballots in the Democratic primaries than were cast in the Republican primaries. That's 71% more votes.

Republican primary turnout was greater than Democratic primary turnout in only Alabama (barely), Arizona (John McCain's home state) and Utah (Mitt Romney's religious home state). 63% of all ballots counted were cast in the Democratic primaries.

These numbers are glaring. The Republican candidates have not energized voters, and the Obama / Clinton battle has. In Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, D.C., and Wisconsin, the second place Democratic candidate received more votes than all votes cast in the Republican contest. The Democratic contests have seen record turnout from state to state in both primary and caucus contests, and if the number of participants in caucuses are added to the mix the disparity is even greater.

We all knew that Democrats would be energized in this presidential election year, but we did not expect that Republican turnout would be so poor in comparison, and unless John McCain can bring together the warring factions of his party, it looks like it will be a very difficult year for Republicans up and down the ticket.