Texas Democratic Party chair Boyd Richie seems pretty ebullient today, and he’s put out a press release to say that the numbers back his elation. Statewide, 2,857,301 voters took part in the Democratic presidential primary, compared to the 1,380,907 for the Republican equivalent. While those numbers may be a bit skewed (juuuust a leeetle) because John McCain’s heir apparent status made it much less a must-do event for GOPers, that’s still a big turn-out disparity.
But the real win for Richie is the number of Democrats who showed up at the precinct conventions. With only 36% of precincts reporting, that figure stands at 400,000, and is expected to surpass the Dem’s 2004 primary voter turn-out of 839,000. Which, Richie notes with scarcely suppressed glee, means more people went to the effort of voting AND caucusing than the 707,000 who just voted for McCain (who, let’s remember, is still so divisive in his own party that the allegedly irrelevant Mike Huckabee took 32% of the vote.)
“We urge all Democrats to stay involved and join a party that is dedicated to moving Texas forward,” said Richie in his press release: because, either way the nomination goes, if everyone sticks around, that’s a lot of block walkers come November.
This article appears in February 29 • 2008.
