Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Gobsmacked on turnout!

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This is just incredible:

More voters turned out for this week’s election than for any Democratic primary since 1990, a surge that party officials credit to gubernatorial nominee Deval L. Patrick’s grass-roots organizing and that analysts say was also fueled by competitive local races and voter-turnout drives.

There were an estimated 915,209 Democratic ballots cast Tuesday in the contest pitting Patrick against venture capitalist Christopher F. Gabrieli and Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, according to MassVOTE, a nonprofit voter education organization.

What an incredible testament to all the folks working phones, sending emails, canvassing, meeting their neighbors, and just spreading the word. (Side benefit: It makes Galvin look silly. Again.)

One of the reasons we gave for endorsing Patrick was that the grassroots emphasis was “more than just an effective tool for a campaign: it’s profoundly reinvigorating to the political culture as a whole.” Well sure, but we weren’t expecting this.

Is grassroots effort enough to win in November? Can all the emailing, phoning, and persuading beat HealeyBuck$? I know which side I would take. Watch the early polls, and see how they react to the coming onslaught of negative advertising from Healey. I strongly suspect that as in the primary, the person-to-person approach will prevent the negative ads from having all that much impact. Who are you going to believe, some TV ad, or your neighbor or cousin or friend or colleague who’s going for Patrick? That’s how we win.

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Comments

  1. Anyone have the numbers from four years ago? Anyone know how many people cast their votes for Healey on Tuesday?

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    Galvin’s predictions were meaningless, and he knew it–he was just getting some free publicity for himself.

  2. Deval Patrick got more votes than the top two finishers in 2002 (Shannon O’Brien and Robert Reich) combined.  I know the dynamic is different in a three-way race (2006) from a four-way (2002) but I was still surprised by that.

  3. This was the most interesting part of the article to me:

    Veteran political observers said that Boston’s turnout once again reflects an ongoing shift in demographics and politics in the city, from the traditional, mostly white political power centers of West Roxbury and South Boston to the immigrant- and minority-rich neighborhoods of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.

    “People have traditionally written off those neighborhoods,” said Lawrence S. DiCara, a former city councilor and a longtime political observer. “Guess what? They’re not writing them off anymore.”

    South Boston has long been one of the city’s highest-turnout neighborhoods, but in Tuesday’s election, wards 6 and 7, which make up the neighborhood, ranked eighth and ninth out of 22 wards in the city with about 36 percent of registered voters casting ballots. There was higher turnout in Dorchester’s Ward 17, with 39 percent, Roxbury’s Ward 12, with 40.3 percent, and Jamaica Plain’s Ward 19, where 45.3 percent of registered voters cast ballots. That was the highest percentage in the city. The lowest turnout was in Allston and Brighton, with about 23 percent.”

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    This reminds me of part of Sam Yoon’s talk at DFA-Boston this spring.  His campaign analyzed the numbers and it illustrated clearly why South Boston was such a politically powerful neighborhood: they vote.

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    “Jamaica Plain’s Ward 19, where 45.3 percent of registered voters cast ballots. That was the highest percentage in the city.” – that was us.  Ward 19 was Sonia Chang-Diaz’s biggest base of support (and one of the 8 uncounted precincts is 19-3, one of the wards I personally remember we had a back and forth debate with about whether they’d count their votes sigh).  “Roxbury’s Ward 12, with 40.3 percent,” was Wilkerson’s strongest ward.  It’s clear that our state senate race was a huge turnout-booster.

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    “It’s not a sea change,” DiCara said. “It’s a gradual progression.”

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    That is a sea change.  A gradual yet fundamental shift, slow and relentless, so that you might not notice it at first, but you eventually have to adapt because it changes the environment.  Like the sea changing tides.

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