Suckerfish

Competitive Primaries in 2000

Here's how I determined which states had a competitive primary on both sides in 2000:

Bradley withdrew on March 9 ( http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE4DE1F38F93AA35750C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 ) . So there were competitive Democratic primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Delaware, Washington, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Ohio, New York, and Vermont. After that, Gore started getting upwards of 70% of the vote in most states.

McCain also withdrew after Super Tuesday ( http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/03/09/mccain.bradley/ ). So there were competitive Republican primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Delaware, South Carolina, Arizona, Michigan, Virginia, Washington, North Dakota, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Minnesota, Washington. After that, Bush started getting upwards of 70% of the vote in most states.

So states that had a competitive primary on both sides are Iowa, New Hampshire, Delaware, Washington, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Ohio, New York, and Vermont. Of those states, turnout numbers aren't available for Iowa. New York was also excluded because "In New York, Republican voters cast ballots for delegates, with the Presidential preference of the delegate listed below the delegate’s name. Each voter was allowed to select three delegates, therefore casting three votes."

Primary turnout source: http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/2000presprim.htm

General election results source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

Based on this criteria, here is the final data:

Delaware is clearly an outlier (I'm not sure what was going on with their primary and am open to answers on that), so I excluded it in the final analysis. Here's what it looks like without Delaware.

Interesting

Interesting analysis :) I looked into Delaware and their 2000 Democratic primary was non-binding so neither candidate campaigned there, which explains the low Dem turnout.

A good turnout resource

thanks

ah yeah, i use that site for general election turnout all the time... should have used it for this :)

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