While he’s writing about Ohio, I think this by John Scalzi sums up the democracy problem in the U.S. (boldface mine):
On the topic of “Liberals/Democrats strategically voting in the Republican primary,” it be at least some of the reason that the Democratic senatorial primary vote was only 48% of the GOP senate primary vote, with a very similar percentage for the gubernatorial primaries. It was also because there was far less drama involved; everyone expected Tim Ryan to win it, which he did, handily, with nearly 70% of the primary vote — Ryan in fact received more primary votes (nearly 356k) than Vance, the Republican primary winner (nearly 341k).
Is there something to be readily gleaned from these numbers, when it comes to the senatorial race in November? Maybe but possibly not. Ohio has more registered Democrats (947k) than Republicans (836k) and both of these numbers are easily swallowed by the number of unaffiliated voters (6.2m), and across the state only 18.8% of eligible voters turned out. Which means that our senatorial candidates were decided by roughly 4.4% of our electorate in both cases. So that’s great, and also leaves lots of room for things to happen in the general, in which possibly 36% of our electorate will vote.
Sad, but very true, though it does mean if Democrats rally the troops–and Republicans don’t–victories, even in reddish-leaning areas, are quite possible.
mikethemadbiologist
will Democrats be allowed to vote? will elections officials be allowed to count the vote? I see Brooks Brother’s riots happening all across the country this November and I see Biden doing zero to prevent it.
Ohio Democrats have constantly shot themselves in the foot. There is no reason that Democrats can’t win here, but they’re more concerned with signaling to progressives that they aren’t welcome in the party than they are with actually winning elections. The fact that they felt the need to endorse Tim Ryan despite the fact that he was heavily bankrolled by out of state donors and running against a relatively unknown candidate pretty much sums up their inability to get out of their own way.
The numbers conceal the fact that most Ohio Democrats cannot vote in primaries because of the level of intimidation. Nearly all of the “unaffiliated” are Democrats. As long ago as 1994 or 1995, a county sheriff was caught trying to get hold of voting records in order to prioritize responses to 911 calls. Figure it out.