Democratic primary turnout blues continue in South Carolina

As the final votes were counted in South Carolina, and most of the night's commentary revolved around Clinton vs Sanders and the scope of Clinton’s victory, what I was looking at were the absolute numbers again.

As with the three contests before this, they’re really not very good.

PRIMARY TURNOUT (IN THOUSANDS)

With 100% of the South Carolina vote in, we’re looking at a more than 30% decrease in voter turnout over 2008, whereas the GOP saw a 66% increase in voter participation in South Carolina vs the same cycle. That marks the greatest fall-off from 2008 numbers thusfar.

Consistently across all four states, GOP turnout is way up, and Dem turnout is down. Excepting the Nevada caucuses, absolute GOP voter numbers are higher than absolute Dem numbers in each contest.

The last time GOP primary participation exceeded that of Democrats was 2000, in the Gore-Bush catastrophe that has defined this generation. In 2008, Democratic participation clocked that of the GOP, and the Dems won handily in the fall.

The early buzz on Twitter was that Clinton's win was driven by historically large African-American turnout. Unfortunately, this conflated vote share with absolute numbers. The reality is, the absolute number of African-American voters who voted Saturday was down over 20% per the exits (crossed with vote totals), but their relative vote share increased, because white voters were down a jaw-dropping 43% since the last contested primary cycle.

Roughly 370k Democratic voters participated in 2016 vs 530k+ in 2008. Clinton’s absolute vote count, while shellacking Sanders 3-to-1, was still nearly twenty-five thousand fewer votes than Obama alone achieved in 2008, in a dynamic three-way contest.

The early spin on last night’s results is that it bodes well for the general election, but I’m not sure how we generalize to that conclusion from these results. What we’re seeing instead is the fourth straight contest where Democratic voter activation is very weak, and turnout significantly depressed vis-a-vis 2008. What’s more, only 13% of primary voters were first time voters last night – by far the lowest of the first four states – and these voters again trended Sanders by a 63-37 margin.

Empirically, relative to the Obama wave, the Democratic frontrunner is consistently turning out less of the base, barely turning out new voters at all, and is showing strength among high propensity voting groups while showing marked weakness among low propensity voting groups. Given that the GOP is seeing greater base activation in the primaries thusfar, a base turnout strategy that captures perhaps 85-90% of Obama high propensity groups alone is not going to succeed.

It should be said again: Obama wins in ‘08 and ‘12 owed less to maximizing the African-American vote share and turnout than his ability to turn out low propensity youth and Latino voters while keeping his margins with whites and independents close enough to win. While Obama took 93% of the African-American vote in 2012, John Kerry also took the African-American vote by an astonishing 88-11 margin over George W Bush. The difference in total voter participation rate was 1-2 percentage points between Kerry and Obama (with African-Americans composing 13% of the total vote in 2008). Meanwhile, under-30 voters, composing 19% of the total vote in 2012, voted for Obama 60-38 over Romney, whereas they composed 17% of the total vote in 2004, and only voted Kerry 54-45 over Bush. The math says that Obama’s expanded margin among youth was roughly twice as important to his overall victory margin than his expanded margin with African-Americans.

Ignoring the weakness among younger voters by saying “they never turn out anyway" is a dangerous precedent, and a losing proposition in 2016.

The Democrats are not going to win South Carolina in November. Obama lost to Romney here by 10.5 pts in 2012. And the irony of the next two weeks of primaries and caucuses is that the string of victories that Clinton is most assured of (eg, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Texas) are across a region that simply does not elect Democrats at the national level any more. Clinton’s strength in these contests is very meaningful in securing the nomination, but essentially meaningless for the general in November.

Perhaps unwisely, Sanders effectively conceded the South Carolina contest after Nevada, moving on to other Super Tuesday states, and Saturday's result showed that his constituencies checked out as well. Voter participation is typically light in non-competitive contests, and South Carolina had the lowest share of under-45 voters of the four first battle states, while independents (at 16%) were at an ebb as well. Meanwhile, whites are checking out of the Democratic contests in droves and joining the GOP contests, driving remarkable participation levels on their side. While Clinton narrowly won South Carolina whites per the exit polls, the 43% drop in participation suggests a real weakness in the general election that will have to be closely watched.

The Democrats have an emerging demographic advantage, but that advantage isn’t enough if the base only turns out at 90% of Obama levels while the GOP turns out whites at historic levels. The Democrats really can lose the general election due to low voter activation and eroding margins with whites, men and independents, plus depressed youth and liberal participation rates.

I’ve been a skeptic of both Clinton and Sanders throughout this cycle (I think it’s a weak field), but now, as Clinton moves to her end game, it’s important to look at the trends so as not to take the wrong lessons away from the coming string of likely blowout victories. As constructed, the primary calendar was hers to lose, especially given the early calendar’s Southern cluster. But note the critical questions as you watch the results roll in: Is the state a contestable state in November? Is voter participation soft? Is Clinton improving among low propensity voter groups? Is the GOP continuing to mobilize their voters at historic rates?

The answers to these questions will mean the difference between defeat and victory in November.