Anyone who doesn't think Democratic voters are fired up for this year's election is not paying attention. On Tuesday, over 1.25 million Indianans voted for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary. This is 30% more of the total votes received in 2004 by presidential candidate John Kerry in the general election. The Democratic vote in the Indiana primary not only outstrips Kerry's total from the general-usually the vote in aprimary is about 50% of the vote in November-but it is closer to Bush's vote total in Indiana than it is to Kerry's. Bush received about 1.48 million votes in Indiana in 2004, 60% of the vote.
Indiana didn't vote for a Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and, looking to the number of votes in the general election, the last time a Democrat topped the one-million mark was in 1976. Jimmy Carter was nevertheless defeated by Gerald Ford. That means that 1.25 million votes indeed is a historic achievement.
The combined results of Obama and Clinton in Indiana confirm a trend that was already apparent in the first primaries: the exceptionally high turnout among Democratic voters, and the depressed turnout among Republican voters.This is enormously important because the main political trend in recent years has been the polarization of the electorate: about 90 percent of those identifying with a political party vin a given year do vote for that party's presidential candidate in November. In 2004, exit polls showed that John Kerry had won 89 percent of the Democratic vote, George W. Bush 93 percent of the Republican vote.
In other words, there is a huge advantage for the party that is ahead in what political scientists call "party identification," simply because its pool of voters is larger. And what is the situation today? The Democratic advantage is now of 10 points, according to Rasmussen, one of the widest partisan gaps ever measured and it is clearly linked to the interest created by the primaries season.
Conclusion: even if the internecine war between Clinton and Obama will leave some scars in the party, the clear trend this year is toward a mobilization of Democratic voters that should propel the nominee over the top in November, whoever he or she is.
