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Quick Question: Is there a correlation between primary turnout and general election turnout in Florida?

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.

flturnout (excel sheet)

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.

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