Now that the 2012 Primary is in the books its time to take a look at the numbers and see what they can tell us for November.  

Overall turnout this year was 42.3% which is consistent with the last four primary elections, no big news here.  Even with the "big" Democratic primary races, turnout did not spike and was actually a little lower than 2010.   What is interesting is that despite the action in the Dem primaries, more Republicans voted in the 2012 Primary than in 2006, 2008 and 2010.  

As expected, almost half of all voters that cast ballots in the Primary did so before Election Day.  49% of voters voted either by absentee mail or by early walk in.  This is significant because it forces campaigns to start communicating with voters earlier and changes the way they spend their resources.  The ratio of early and election day voters varies from district to district but it is something every campaign should be taking note of.  

One complaint that I have every year is the way the election numbers are reported by the Office of Elections.  In the past the numbers are only available in a large PDF or text files that are difficult to understand or extract data from.  In addition, the early walk in and absentee mail totals were not reported by precinct which made it difficult to see exactly how the vote totals broke down.  This has changed this year and the way the votes came in are available by precinct.  You still have to convert the text file into a spreadsheet to make it workable but at least there has been some improvement.  

If you want to take an in-depth look at the precinct by precinct numbers you can download a spreadsheet that we have put together by clicking here.  This file breaks down every race by precinct and has the vote totals by early walk, absentee mail and election day. You can sort the different columns to compare the numbers in different ways.  

Primary numbers give us some valuable insight to vote patters for the General so they can not be overlooked.   And this year these numbers are even more important because of redistricting.  Since all the states legislative lines have changed, the Primary Election vote data is the only information we have about the performance of these new districts.  

If you have any questions or want to talk about a specific races numbers, let me know.  I look forward to hearing your take on these numbers so feel free to share your thoughts with me.  

Take care,