Wednesday, February 1, 2012

What Mitt Romney's victories have in common: a low Republican turnout. Terrific news for Barack Obama.


The Florida primary overnight has produced the thumping victory for Mitt Romney that the polls were predicting. But what might be worrying GOP strategists is that turnout was down sharply compared to four years ago. Florida will be one of the critical battlegrounds in November and the last thing the party wants is for Republican-inclined voters to be less enthusiastic.
The New York Times's election and polling analyst, Nate Silver, has done some number-crunching using the exit poll data from the four states that voted in January and finds that there is a pattern. In Iowa the number of self-identifying Republicans was down by 11%, in New Hampshire 15% the reduction was 15% while in Florida overnight it was 16%.