Republicans Wrote Out Bush
Daily Kos brings us one of the oft-overlooked pieces of very interesting data out of yesterday's NH primaries.
Of the 60,000-odd Republicans who voted in their own primary yesterday (compared with the Dems' record 200,000 turnout), 57.6 thousand of them voted (as expected) for Mr. Bush. Others - and I admire anyone who doesn't tout the political line, regardless of which party, with the exception of Zel Miller of course - wrote in candidates. Namely:
- Kerry with 835 write-in votes
Dean with 633
Clark with 545
Edwards with 541
Man, while not huge (about 2500 votes total), one must wonder who eligible to vote in the GOP primary in NH just didn't show up yesterday because Bush was a foregone conclusion and/or because they did not want to vote for Bush. If I were a Dem voter (I'm not) and I didn't want to vote for the incumbent Dem prez in a primary, I probably wouldn't go to the polls until Election Day when my vote would actually count for something. I'm assuming that same logic stands for the other side. Thus, those 2500 votes for Dems from the GOP primary may be symbolic of a much larger issue.
If I were Karl Rove, I'd have a Xanax or 5 and wonder why the only NE state to vote for Bush in 2000 had such a large turnout of GOP primary voters who voted against our beloved leader.
|