Why are there such huge differences in the level of voter turnout in different states?

[Howard_Roark]

I was looking at the state of Texas on Google Elections and it shows over a million primary voters, in contrast the New York Primary has about 10% as many voters despite being only a little smaller in population. I also noticed that Florida and Arizona have high primary turnout and that many other states have low turnout like New York. How is it that New York County (Manhattan) has only 751 Ron Paul voters, in contrast Travis County (Austin) had over 9,000 voters for Paul with only 2/3 the population of Manhattan? Why is there so much more Republican Primary voters in one states vs others? Are the delegates given proportional to population, and if so would that mean that someone voting in the Republican Primary in New York's vote would count significantly more than say in Texas?

 

[parocks]

What other races were on the ballot in each of the different states?

 

[Jackie Moon]

These numbers are old but give a rough estimate...

New York had 11.4 million registered voters in November 2011 but only 2.8 million were registered Republican. Texas has 13 million registered voters and from this survey in 2010 it says about 45% are Republican, so around 5.85 million.

But New York is a closed primary and Texas is open. So we only had around 2.8 million potential votes in New York and 13 million in Texas.

Also, New York probably had a lower than normal turnout because their primary is split up in to three separate votes this year.

"This is definitely the worst it's ever been. We've never had a situation where they've separated the ballot and we've had different primaries. This is just insane." Kiggins said.

After tomorrow's presidential primary there will be a primary for federal offices June 16, and then a ballot for state and local offices that will be held sometime in August or September. The state legislature is still trying to figure out the timing for the last ballot.

http://www.wrvo.org/post/will-multiple-primaries-lead-voter-confusion

 

[DamianTV]

He who votes has absolutely no power at all. Only he who counts the votes has any real power.

Look at the ways they've been trying to twist the rules. What it comes down to is "your vote doesnt count" if your vote was for Ron Paul. That is the essence of the differences in the numbers, different rules in different states implemented to try to stop (and fail at stopping our movement) anyone who wants to chagne the Status Quo.

 

[tsai3904]

Not only was New York a closed primary, you had to be a registered Republican 6 months before the primary (by October 2011), when not many supporters were paying attention.

 

[fr33]

Well to state the obvious; you are comparing red states to a blue state. New York has fewer republicans.