Who votes in the Primaries? - Comparing Primary to Election Numbers

[sabra]

According the FAQ on the OHIO SOS site (http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/voter/faq.htm):

Must I declare a political party affiliation when I register?
No. However, when you vote in a primary election, your vote will determine your party affiliation.

I was looking at some of the stats on Ohio SOS website in regards to the primary election numbers.

<<Primary - March 2, 2004 Voter Turnout>>
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/2004/pri/voter.htm

Some of the numbers seemed kind of odd...

For example Butler County had 69,194 votes casted for the 2004 Primaries, which according to the FAQ would give those voters, Democratic affiliation. However for the presidential election Butler is reporting 54,185 votes for Kerry. Does that mean 15k of these "Democrats" voted for Bush?

There are other counties that stick out too. But before I investigated this further, I thought I would post this, to see if I am missing something, that would make these numbers make more sense (maybe there are people who voted for Bush, that cared about the Democratic votes in the primaries?)

Thanks.

[WI_DEM]

1. well there still were republican primaries and Bush did get

some die hard republicans who voted for him. Is the 69,000 number only for Dem primary or as a whole?

[mdb]

2. This page may be more informative.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/11-02-04.htm

Democratic Primary

* Democratic Presidential

[sabra]

3. Thanks!

Yeah, it seems like the 69k is for all primaries, not just Democratic, that makes more sense...

[indy_azcat]

4. WTF? Numbers question

On the total primary votes page:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/2004/pri/voter.htm
It says 2,365,969 ballots were cast.

If I sum all of the bushies from the districts at:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/2004/pri/repPres.htm
I get 777972 votes

and do the same for all candidates in all districts for the dems:
http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/results/2004/pri/demPres.htm
and get 1221014

First off, that's a lot of 'die hard' repubs.

Second, if I subtract the dem and repug totals from the total ballots, that leaves 366983 unaccounted for votes (16%). Were there that many write-ins or spoilers?

help.:tinfoilhat: