The down-ballot dropoff

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:35:24 -0400

The Democratic presidential primary was the hot ticket last night.

The heated and historic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama drew many voters to the polls who typically don't cast ballots in the primary and inspired some first-time voters.

But how many of them stuck around to vote in the other races?

Taking the presidential race as the high-water mark, we see that roughly 1.6 million people voted in the Democratic primary.

Nearly all of those stuck around for the governor's race. In the primary between Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue, 1.5 million voted, or 95 percent of the presidential voters.

After that, it gets interesting.

Nearly the same number of voters stuck around for the U.S. Senate race (85 percent) and the lieutenant governor's race (84 percent), or roughly 1.3 million votes.

The races for state treasurer (80 percent), state auditor (79 percent) and schools superintendent (79 percent) races, also did well, with roughly 1.3 million votes.

The numbers dropped off after that in the races for insurance commissioner (76 percent) and labor commissioner (76 percent), or roughly 1.2 million.

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The down-ballot dropoff