Some commentators have expressed concern about low voter turnout for the Democratic caucuses in Iowa and the primary in New Hampshire, especially in view of the higher than average turnout on the Republican side. This concern is not universal, however. Jeff Stein, blogging on Vox, points out that record turnout for primaries hasn't translated to election wins in the past for Democrats or Republicans. He also notes that even the record turnout for the Nevada Republican caucuses is small compared to the number of people who actually voted in the 2012 election, and suggests that the "crowded Republican field" and "liberal fatigue" may also be contributing to the turnout gap.
Jeff Spross offers a somewhat different view of the problem (if indeed it is a problem): Is the recovering economy actually repressing Democratic turnout? There's not a great deal of research on it, but recent studies indicate, contrary to research over the last few decades, that higher unemployment drives turnout up. One line of reasoning is that voters who've recently lost jobs will turn out to punish their elected officials for mangling the economy. Obviously, there's a lot more going on, though, because Spross's chart plotting voter turnout against the unemployment rate doesn't show much of a correlation. On the other hand, just looking at primary turnout in presidential election years, there appears to be a much stronger relation to unemployment, particularly on the Democratic side. Spross thinks we may be returning to normal, which may not bode well for Sanders, but
That said, we're still largely in almost unprecedented waters: a grindingly slow sort-of-recovery that's stretched out seven years after the second worst economic collapse of the last century. And there are lots of factors at play besides the economy: The Republicans' blockbuster turnout might also suggest that when faced with a catastrophe like Donald Trump, a lot of voters are willing to get to the polls to shoot him down.
I agree. Trump has his own loyal base, but I doubt it includes even a majority of the established (Establishment?) GOP base. According to Gallup, Trump is the most disliked presidential candidate since 1992 when they started tracking unfavorable ratings, so there must be quite a few Republicans who as turned off by Trump as most Democrats. So it makes sense that a lot of those anti-Trump voters would cast ballots for anyone but Trump.
It's also true that Clinton is widely disliked. Aside from the fact that her unfavorability ratings are still well below Trump's, however, I don't think she's disliked to the same degree that Trump is. Among Democrats, Clinton is disliked because she is not trusted in general, and because of her ties to Wall Street. Among Republicans, it's the simple fact that she's a Democrat. To be sure, she has a lot of baggage-- Whitewater, Benghazi, emails. She's been in politics a long time, and while many reasons she is disliked are deserved, quite a few are due to circumstance.
Trump, on the other hand, isn't just disliked. It's more like visceral hatred. With more than ample justification, he's been called a blowhard, braggart, buffoon, bully, clown, dilettante, egomaniac, fool, hypocrite, jerk, liar, loose cannon, loudmouth, moron, megalomaniac, narcisist, and a lot of other names banned at one time or another by the FCC. I can't document all these epithets, but most of them can be found in the list of words that came to voters' minds when they thought of Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University poll last summer.
I don't know if there are many Republicans who are so anti-Trump that they would vote for a Democrat in the general election, but I suspect there are quite a few who wouldn't vote at all if he were nominated. Not so with Clinton, the many contentious diaries here on Daily Kos notwithstanding. Diehard Sanders supporters who would really sit the election out rather than vote for Clinton, though quite vocal, are almost certainly fewer in number than Republicans who would refuse to vote for Trump.
A couple more thoughts on Clinton versus Trump, which doesn't sound to me like the slam dunk GOP win that many comments on Daily Kos seem to take for granted. More on that in a bit, but first a closer look at one of the words I associated with Trump-- "liar." That Trump is in fact a liar has been well documented. Curiously, liar was the word most frequently associated with Clinton in the Quinnipiac poll, but it didn't even make the list for Trump. Perhaps more surprising was that while "untrustworthy" was what several poll respondents thought of Trump, "honest" and "truthful" were both more mentioned more frequently. How can it be that people not only fail to identify Trump as a liar, in the face of overwhelming evidence, but actually think honesty and truthfulness are his most notable qualities?
This very question is addressed in a three part Scientific American blog by Melanie Tannenbaum, Decoding Trump-Mania: The Psychological Allure of Hating Political Correctness. Two reasons suggested by Tannenbaum why Trump is perceived as honest have to do with general differences between conservatives and liberals. Research indicates conservatives are less tolerant of ambiguity, and since Trump is known to "consistently say anything and everything on his mind," his supporters conclude he has nothing to hide. The second reason is Trump's criticism of political correctness, regarded by conservatives as a form of censorship.
Tannenbaum describes another phenomenon whereby the very outlandishness of Trump's statements makes it more likely people will trust him:
When people say things that are non-normative, unexpected, or non-self-serving, those things are seen as more likely to be true, and outside observers are more likely to think they have a good chance of really knowing the authentic, deep-down, true personality of the person saying them.
Maybe. Whatever else Trump is, he's shrewd. When his opponents start attacking him in earnest, though, he may find he's gone to the well a little too often with the insane remarks. Which brings me back to Clinton versus Trump. In a recent diary, Clinton vs Trump: First Impressions, Bob Burnett examines the prospects of a contest between the two current front runners. His conclusion that it would be very close, decided by the independent vote, is based on the assumption that both the Democratic and Republican bases will vote for their party nominee. Burnett acknowledges that "some Republicans loathe Trump" and "some Democrats do not like Clinton" but implies that the net effect of these groups will be a wash. He thinks both groups may just sit out the election, but they probably won't vote for the opposing party.
I disagree. There are significantly more Republicans who dislike Trump than Democrats who dislike Clinton. Moreover, as I argue above, a higher proportion of anti-Trump Republicans than anti-Clinton Democrats would likely sit out the election or vote against their party if Trump and Clinton were nominated.
As for the campaign itself, I guess it's not surprising, given her unfavorability rating, that there is no shortage of opinion that Clinton is unelectable. There are so many skeletons in her closet, the argument goes, that when Trump and the GOP turn their attention to her, she doesn't stand a chance. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I find that argument a bit naive. Early in the campaign for the 1992 election, I remember reading a conservative op-ed piece pronouncing Bill Clinton was unelectable because Americans would never accept a draft dodger as their president. I'd never heard of Bill Clinton and I certainly didn't know anything about his selective service record, but there was a presumptuous, even gleeful tone of the editorial that made me wonder. Why was Bill Clinton so hated? Since that time, I've had the impression that Republicans, right up to impeachment, have gone to extraordinary lengths to ruin him, and have come away more frustrated at every failure.
I myself first became a fan of Bill Clinton when he played his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show. A fellow clarinetist who went on to major in performance remarked that Bill Clinton was the first single reed man in the White House. I thought he said another president played the oboe-- Millard Fillmore, maybe?-- but I can't find any confirmation of that on the web. Anyway, just as I have my own reason to like him, I'm sure others have reasons to dislike Bill Clinton. It must be more than his draft deferment, though. Otherwise, how could George W. Bush ever have been elected?
But, back to the supposed skeletons in the Clinton closet. Could it be that after so many years trying to dig up dirt on the Clintons, something really scandalous was overlooked? Eight Congressional committees investigating Benghazi failed to find anything incriminating, but if Hillary gets nominated the Republicans' investigative prowess will change and it will turn the election in their favor? Or perhaps they've found something already, and they've kept it under wraps, saving it for Trump's campaign? Or maybe Trump, who championed the birther movement against Obama, will run a similarly devastating campaign against Clinton?
Trump taking advantage of some heretofore unknown Clinton scandal seems unlikely to me. Clinton has a long record in the public eye, and opposition research against her is pretty easy to find. Consider, too that she held her own quite impressively under questioning by Trey Gowdy's select Benghazi committee. While no amount of bad press about Trump is going to affect his base, neither are reports of Clinton's faults going to dissuade her supporters. They may not trust her or even particularly like her, but they will never loathe her to the same degree they do Trump. If there really are voters, independent or otherwise, who might change preferences based on negative revelations about the candidate, Trump will probably lose more of them than Clinton. Opposition research on Trump may be too late to deny him the GOP nomination, but it's picking up considerably since his Super Tuesday victories. The depth of Trump's unpopularity was highlighted by the speed with which Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Donald Trump (HBO) itself became a news item, even giving rise to a Wikipedia entry.
Trump's continued success certainly has defied early predictions of a quick exit, but one estimate hasn't changed. His ceiling since he started leading in the polls was and still is thought to be around 40%. With the winner-take-all format for most of the remaining GOP primaries, that may be enough for the nomination. The general election will be different, though, and that is clearly why the GOP establishment is nervous.
While the crowded field and the general dislike of Trump has a lot to do with the record voter turnout for the Republicans, one thing I haven't seen discussed much is crossover voting for Trump by Democrats, which I suspect may have affected the outcomes of both primaries in Massachesetts. Given that Democratics outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts by about two to one, it wouldn't have taken a large percentage of them to noticeably skew the results on the Republican side. This sort of "mischief" is more often associated with Republicans, as exemplified by Limbaugh's Operation Chaos which aimed to prolong the Democratic nomination process in 2008 by encouraging Republicans to vote for Clinton. While the effectiveness of that effort was debated, Kos called for a similar drive to disrupt the Republicans in 2012. Crossing over to vote for Santorum in 2012 seems a lot less scary than voting for Trump this year, but polls and opinions concede that Trump would be the most easily beatable opponent for either Clinton or Sanders.
Of course, if significant numbers of Democrats are crossing over to vote for Trump, it will also distort the turnout assessment. This, in addition to the above noted observations of historical trends by Jeff Stein and unemployment effects by Jeff Spross, suggests that the lower turnout for the Democrats is not necessarily a cause for concern. I think another reason for the low voter turnout thus far is that most Democratic voters like both Clinton and Sanders and don't feel any urgent need to choose between them. In a recent segment on NPR, Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida who blogs about voter turnout at electproject.org, cites exit polls that bear this out:
Most Democrats, about 70 percent or so, say that they would be satisfied with whichever candidate - Clinton or Sanders -if they go on to win the nomination.
It’s going to be an interesting next couple of months.
A quick thought on the Supreme Court vacancy. I enjoyed listening to Al Franken opine that if a "lame duck" president should not make a Supreme Court nomination, Senators in the last year of their terms should likewise refrain from introducing bills, etc. Why not take it a step further? If Obama is a lame duck, maybe he should just resign now. That way Biden could nominate him to fill Scalia's position.