Caucus Voters vs. Primary Voters

One theme of this year's Democratic primary campaign has been Hillary Clinton's stronger performance in primaries and Barack Obama's in caucuses. To date, Clinton has done pretty well in primaries, winning most of the large state contests. By contrast, Obama has won 10 of 11 caucuses to date, in some cases by better than 2:1 margins.

In an attempt to downplay her caucus underperformance, Clinton has portrayed the caucus process as unrepresentative and undemocratic. ABC News quoted Clinton in advance of the Nevada Caucuses (ironically, the one caucus contest she would go on to win):

"You have a limited period of time on one day to have your voices heard," Clinton, D-N.Y., said. "That is troubling to me. You know in a situation of a caucus, people who work during that time -- they're disenfranchised. People who can't be in the state or who are in the military, like the son of the woman who was here who is serving in the Air Force, they cannot be present."

Clinton appears to be pretty accurate on this score: caucuses see only about a third the participation level that primaries generate. The table below shows this year's caucus or primary turnout in a selection of states, compared to John Kerry's vote total from 2004. (Caucus states are in yellow, primary states in green.) This ratio is a measure of relative participation by the states' Democrats and Democratic leaners.

*Turnout estimate provided by the Washington Democratic Party.
**While the New Mexico contest was called a "caucus", it functioned like a primary: voters used a secret ballot which they could cast at polling sites between noon and 7 PM on election day.

Caucus turnout was especially low in the later caucus states, which don't benefit from Iowa's longstanding caucus culture or Nevada's intense candidate focus (and controversial workplace voting sites). Of my sample, the strongest late caucus ratio was Nebraska's 15.1%.

Granted, some of the turnout depression reflects the fact that Clinton has effectively ceded many of the caucus states and made little effort to turn out her voters. We'll see if Maine, which Obama looks to be leading by a healthy but not overwhelming margin, shows a higher turnout as a heavily contested state. Even so, the roughly 30% ratio in Iowa and Nevada still looks weak compared to primary states.