America has always had switch-hitters – in baseball and, yep, in politics. Switch hitters, whatever kind, don’t care whether they swing right or wrong – all that matters is scoring – or at least getting on base.
After the primary election, my email box lit up with moaning and groaning about Democratic “cross-over” voting skewing Republican results. This was not idle chatter, as a few days before the election, MEA-MFT teachers’ union honcho Eric Feaver sent out an email reading: “If you care [the] Tea Party gang not completely own the Republican Party, […] if you can, go vote in the [GOP] primary.”
So, did Democrats cross over in massive numbers to sabotage conservative Republicans? Let’s poke around in the numbers a bit:
Flathead County had a pretty pathetic 28 percent turnout. Helena, Butte and Great Falls beat us in turnout, but we beat the college punks in Missoula and Bozeman.
Total votes cast in the county commission race (15,982) were completely lopsided – 13,048 Republican ballots marked versus 2,934 for the Democrats.
Flathead has 60,587 registered voters. 17,511 cast ballots, with the busiest race (US House GOP) seeing 13,831 votes. The busiest Democrat race (U.S. Senate primary) saw 3,292 total votes. That’s 17,123 votes combined.
In 2010, while I couldn’t find turnout data, the busiest primary race (again, U.S. House GOP) pulled 12,779 voters. The busiest Democrat race (U.S. House primary) saw 2,731 total votes – 15,510 votes combined.
The weird thing is, in the 2010 general U.S. House race, Dennis McDonald (D) scored 8,127 votes and Denny Rehberg (R) landed 21,153. So, about half of GOP general election voters voted in the primary, with only about one-third of Democrats voting in both elections.
Is that a pattern? Perhaps.
In the 2010 state Senate District 4 primary, 2,380 Republican votes were cast, against 652 for the uncontested Democrat. Jon Sonju won the primary and general election, 4,007 against 1,902 for Mary Reckin – again, roughly the same half/third primary/general vote proportions.
In the 2014 race for Senate District 4, 2,626 Republican ballots were voted, against 533 votes for the uncontested Democrat. Mark Blasdel won the primary.
In other words, the total vote for the hottest primary races went up about 10 percent in the Flathead from 2010 to 2014. But in the SD 4 Senate race, while Republican votes increased at the expected rate, about 10 percent, Democrat votes went down over 10 percent.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say Democrats are either lazy, have boring primary candidates, or really, really like those thrilling Flathead Republican races.
There are some other interesting local clues. Local hero Ryan Zinke did 10 percent better in the Flathead than he did statewide, as did most-conservative Matt Rosendale (plus 6 percent), while the two Billings candidates got significantly smaller Flathead percentages than statewide. For political geeks, that signals somewhat more “polarity” among Flathead Republicans than the statewide norm.
In House District 5 (Whitefish), incumbent Democrat Ed Leiser scored only 523 votes while 1,191 votes were cast for the Republicans – winner Doug Adams scored 796 of the total. One interesting little sidebar to the HD 5 race is that Whitefish will have a government review. That went 603-444 for – one time that the difference in primary turnout habits by Republicans might have an impact on what has become a “nonpartisan” but clearly Democratic Whitefish city government.
So – do I think there were some switch hitters June 3? Yep. Home run? Nope, but a base hit beats the showers.
Honestly, there is a war going on in the GOP, between the elites and the peasants, mainly because things look pretty darn favorable for Republicans as a whole. If there were no chances for GOP wins in November, there wouldn’t be so many contested primary races. You know, like the Democrats, whose primaries were contested seriously only in Democratic strongholds?
Were I a strategic-thinking Flathead Democrat (there are more than a few) facing no real primary choices, and long odds as a party, I’d be switch-hitting too. As Feaver wrote, “the complexion of the next Legislature may well be decided June 3, one Republican primary after another.” It was.