Great question via twitter this morning – is there a correlation between primary election turnout and general election turnout?
My first guess was “no, it is more a function of competitive races on the ballot, and historically one party will have incumbency.”
BUT – let’s goto the data for a quick explore.
Lucky for us, Florida has a historical archive.
https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/data-statistics/elections-data/voter-turnout/
I cleaned it up a little and added a binary variable to explore POTUS v midterms.
The relationship between primary turnout and general election turnout in Florida Elections (1954-2016)
| Correlations | |||
| primary | general | ||
| primary | Pearson Correlation | 1 | .039 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .834 | ||
| N | 31 | 31 | |
| general | Pearson Correlation | .039 | 1 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .834 | ||
| N | 31 | 32 | |
POTUS ONLY YEARS
| Correlations | |||
| primary | general | ||
| primary | Pearson Correlation | 1 | .111 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .693 | ||
| N | 15 | 15 | |
| general | Pearson Correlation | .111 | 1 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .693 | ||
| N | 15 | 16 | |
MIDTERMS ONLY YEARS
| Correlations | |||
| primary | general | ||
| primary | Pearson Correlation | 1 | -.130 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .632 | ||
| N | 16 | 16 | |
| general | Pearson Correlation | -.130 | 1 |
| Sig. (2-tailed) | .632 | ||
| N | 16 | 16 | |
Conclusion
There is no measurable relationship between the two variables; need to explore other potential variables that may predict general election turnout better – such as the number of competitive races.
