August 11, 2010 08:30 PM UTC

Republicans Voted In Higher Numbers...Because They Had More Races

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve seen the beginning of a narrative emerging on some national news sites, such as MSNBC, about a greater meaning to high Republican voter turnout — a narrative that ignores some important details:

On the one hand, the Tea Party is giving the GOP a jolt of energy and enthusiasm heading into the fall. For instance, more Coloradoans last night voted in the Republican Senate primary than the Democratic one; in fact, Norton and Buck both got more votes individually in their primary than Michael Bennet did in his, and Bennet won by a larger margin.

It’s true that Republicans voted in higher numbers than Democrats in the Primary, and there is probably a slightly higher level of enthusiasm among Republican voters than among Democrats. But that’s only part of the story. Democrats only had one top-ticket race to consider yesterday, while Republicans had three statewide races and three other congressional primaries. Here are the races that were on the ballot for seats higher than state legislative battles:

Democratic Primary Races

U.S. Senate

Republican Primary Races

U.S. Senate

Governor

State Treasurer

Congress, CD-2

Congress, CD-3

Congress, CD-7

To put it another way, there are 12 top-ticket races in Colorado in 2010 (5 statewide seats and 7 congressional seats), and Republicans had Primary fights in half of them. Of course the GOP turnout was going to be significantly higher than Democratic turnout, because there were 10 more Republican campaigns running GOTV operations.