The Supply-Side Election

There's a lot of concern and shock over the low, sub-ten-percent voter turnout at last week's primary. The concern is that its a signal of voter apathy, and a lack of confidence in our democratic institutions. There are also those suggesting that it's a sign that moving the primary to earlier in the year is a failure.

Eh. Fugeddaboudit.

The Primary and General elections are different animals. Apples and oranges. Most people vote - one way or the other - to impact the agenda, and the public agenda is always on the ballot in the General election as the different parties send forth their appointed champions into the arena.

Primaries can have that quality too, but more often than not they don't, and voters know that well. Ballot lines this year were generally either uncontested, or only marginally contested. Whereas the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 2000 offered voters a high-profile, hard-fought struggle between five viable candidates - most of whom had a real fighting chance at emerging victorious - this year was a little less compelling for the typically-engaged Democratic voter ("Hm! I'd better rush out so Peter Welch can win 301-0 in my town instead of only 300-0!!"). Without a real marquee battle, turnout was left to those that strongly identify as associating with one party or another, and in a state without party registration (where, essentially, every voter is an independent from the get-go - and don't think for a second that this fact doesn't strongly impact the psyche of the Vermont voter - there are a lot of proud independents in this state!), that's not a big number.

A number probably...well... just about 10 percent.

Maybe if there had been a few more weeks for the Feliciano write-in campaign to catch fire. Maybe if there had been enough time for the Corren write-in effort to spread meaningfully beyond the Burlington-Montpelier corridor, and the Phil Scott write-in forces had fully engaged. But neither happened, so you had a sort of baseline, voting-is-my-duty election turnout.

Now a 10 percent turnout in November would absolutely be a cause for civic panic - but that's truly the "demand side" election, if you will. Voters turn out for that because there is always an impact on public policy that emerges from the result, and people want a say in that.

Think of the primary as the "supply side" election. There's not an immediate policy impact, so what drives turnout is, instead, the supply of meaningful, inspiring, and motivating candidate choices to vote for.

This year options were a bit, shall we say, limited. Not to say any of them were bad, just limited in number.

So don't worry about it. Nothing to see here. November will bring a plenty big turnout, I guarantee.

John Odum