Turnout is lower in the three democratic primaries/caucuses to date. Republican turnout is up to record levels in the primaries they’ve conducted as well (link to Washington Times, no need to click, just trust me). Reasons proposed for this disparity range from our lack of debates, the lesser number of candidates we have, the lack of enthusiasm generated by said candidates, to the fact that 2008 was an exceptional year for several reasons. I’d add to the last link that some of the reasons for 2008 being exceptional could relate to the not-at-all-well-proven “third term curse” whereby Democratic-leaning enthusiasm is boosted in 2008 after two Bush terms, compared to Republican-leaning enthusiasm now being boosted after two Obama terms.
The fact is we have not a frigging clue why the turnout numbers are discrepant, or whether that really matters. Does primary turnout really even correlate with performance in the general election? This is why I am about to hop over to FiveThirtyEight to ask if our old friend Poblano find some data to sort this out. I’d encourage anyone else to do the same, or ask some other favorite numbers geek to take a look and see if anything can be learned. We don’t even know whether to care or to do anything differently than we are now until we know the nature of the problem, and whether it matters or not.