The Biggest News Of Primary Night: Voter Turnout In Florida
I’m not very good at election-night reading of the tea leaves, but I think these voter turnout results in Florida highlighted by Jim Geraghty are astounding, and good news for Rubio.
In the GOP primary in Florida, a foregone conclusion for Rubio, 787,122 total votes cast.
In the Democratic primary, an actual competitive race between Kendrick Meek and Jeff Greene, 489,384 total votes cast.
Those are old numbers. The votes continue to pour in as I write this. According to Geraghty on Twittter, it appears as though Rubio is the first Florida Senate primary candidate to draw over 1,000,000 votes.
There were similar results in the gubernatorial race, with 806,123 votes cast in the GOP race and just 469,230 votes case in the Democrat race.
That big turnout, particularly in Rubio’s race where he basically ran unopposed, shows that Republican voters are energized and ready to cast their ballots for Rubio even in a race that doesn’t really matter. You’d expect the larger turnout to be in the contested Democrat race. That’s huge given that Rubio will be facing a three-way race with former governor Charlie Crist running as an independent after being driven from the primary race by bad poll numbers and possibly undermining Rubio just enough to throw the win to Democrats.
I think there will be a few more prognosticators out there comfortable with putting Florida’s Senate seat down as a win for Rubio.
And the gubernatorial race has national implications as well. Rick Scott has, I’m pretty sure, upset favorite Bill McCollum. While Scott is no shoe-in to win, it’s going to cost Democrats a lot of money to campaign against him likely leaving over governor races in the country out in the cold.
Tags: florida, marco rubio, primaries
