Turnout Speculation, Re-Revisited

Some other big states, by comparison.

Missouri-2004 ... 416,104
Missouri-2008 ... 823,376
(+97.8%)

Tennessee-2004 ... 358,840
Tennessee-2008 ... 614,096
(+71.1%)

Georgia-2004 ... 602,499
Georgia-2008 ... 1,046,453
(+73.7)

Maryland-2004 ... 445,655
Maryland-2008 ... 745,078
(+67.2%)

Boyd Richie is having a press conference tomorrow discussing the turnout throughout the state. Among the notes in the email announcing the conference is that "Other states' Democratic primaries have shown turnout increases of up to 240%"

I'm not even willing to step into the guessing for the statewide turnout yet. Still some moving parts to that one. If it goes through the roof, the two biggest drivers would seem to be Obama in the college towns and Hillary in South Texas. If turnout goes through the roof, advantage Hillary. But if it just goes up to roughly doubling, then no telling right now.

As far as countywide numbers go, I'm still feeling pretty confident of that 125-150k estimate. Either way, this guy points out one benefit to the increase in turnout:

One local Democratic political operative was licking his chops at the prospect. A competitive presidential primary will pull out new voters, who will become reachable for elections in November and beyond.

"The turnout will help us develop the best list of Democratic voters ever," said Bill Kelly, who directed Ellen Cohen's successful challenge of State Rep. Martha Wong two years ago and is now working for U.S. Rep. John Culberson's challenger, Michael Skelly.