{"id":6429,"date":"2016-03-04T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6429"},"modified":"2016-03-03T00:03:40","modified_gmt":"2016-03-03T05:03:40","slug":"moco-dems-who-dont-vote-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6429","title":{"rendered":"MoCo Dems Who Don\u2019t Vote, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I am pleased to present a guest post by Adam Pagnucco:<\/em><\/p>\n

Who are these registered MoCo Democrats who don\u2019t vote?\u00a0 Let\u2019s find out.<\/p>\n

The table below presents data on registered Montgomery County Democrats from the January 2015 voter registration file.\u00a0 As of that date, there were 360,427 registered Democrats in MoCo.\u00a0 The file contains their voting histories in the primary and general elections from 2006 on.\u00a0 Most MoCo Democratic candidates running in primaries, which tend to decide elections here, concentrate their voter contact on the 42,692 people who voted in each of the last three primaries.\u00a0 (They account for 12% of MoCo Dems and 5% of the county\u2019s voting age population.)\u00a0 But for the purpose of this analysis, we will be examining three groups: all registered Democrats, those who voted in each of the last three gubernatorial general elections (Super Dems) and those who have voted in no gubernatorial generals (Non-Voting Dems).<\/p>\n

\"MoCo<\/a><\/p>\n

The first fact that stands out is that the non-voters are a larger group than the super-Dems.\u00a0 There were 98,791 Democrats in the file who voted in each of the 2006, 2010 and 2014 general elections.\u00a0 But there were 127,851 Democrats who did not vote in any of them.\u00a0 That fact alone should worry state and county Democratic strategists who are looking to generate more turnout to defeat Governor Larry Hogan.<\/p>\n

Another fact that stands out is that of the 127,851 Democrats who did not vote in any of the gubernatorial generals, 73,306 voted in at least one of the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.\u00a0 This group accounts for 20% of all MoCo registered Dems.\u00a0 Why are they voting for President and not for Governor?\u00a0 Let\u2019s remember that Hogan\u2019s statewide victory margin in 2014 was 65,510 votes.\u00a0 If half of these presidential-voting Democrats showed up in 2014 and voted for Anthony Brown, Hogan\u2019s margin would have been cut by more than half.\u00a0 If half of all of the non-voting MoCo Dems had showed up to vote for Brown, Hogan\u2019s margin would have been nearly eliminated.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s zero in on a few demographic factors pertaining to MoCo Dems.<\/p>\n

Gender<\/h4>\n

Women account for majorities of registered MoCo Dems, super-Dems and non-voters.\u00a0 No surprise here.\u00a0 Women dominate the rank and file of the Democratic Party even if they account for less than a majority of its elected officials.<\/p>\n

\"MoCo<\/a><\/p>\n

Age<\/h4>\n

Age is the single most meaningful variable differentiating super-Dems from non-voters.\u00a0 The average age of super-Dems is 61.\u00a0 The average age of non-voting Dems is 39.\u00a0 Fifty-three percent of super-Dems are age 60 or older.\u00a0 In contrast, sixty percent of non-voting Dems are 39 or younger.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a different way of looking at age.\u00a0 Following are the turnout rates for Democrats by age group in the 2014 general election.<\/p>\n

\"MoCo<\/a><\/p>\n

Democrats in their 60s and 70s were at least twice as likely to vote as Democrats in their 30s or younger.\u00a0 Nearly 100,000 MoCo Dems in their 30s or younger did not vote in the 2014 general.<\/p>\n

Low turnout among young people is not exclusive to MoCo \u2013 it\u2019s a nationwide phenomenon<\/a>.\u00a0 But because so many young Democrats in MoCo are not voting, that suggests the party needs a strategy to get them to the polls to realize significantly higher turnout in 2018.<\/p>\n

We will look at more differences between super-Dems and non-voters in Part Three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I am pleased to present a guest post by Adam Pagnucco: Who are these registered MoCo Democrats who don\u2019t vote?\u00a0 Let\u2019s find out. The table below presents data on registered Montgomery County Democrats from the January 2015 voter registration file.\u00a0 As of that date, there were 360,427 registered Democrats in MoCo.\u00a0 The file contains … Continue reading MoCo Dems Who Don\u2019t Vote, Part Two<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[63,217],"tags":[1545],"class_list":["post-6429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-montgomery-county","category-turnout","tag-adam-pagnucco"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1FH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6433,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6429\/revisions\/6433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}