Magister,

Thanks for taking the time to compile the data, and don't sweat the formatting issues. It's confusing - the comments take HTML tags, but the blog posts themselves require formatting with the tool bar. I think we're all learning how TPM Cafe works the hard way.

I do, however, want to take issue with your conclusions, even as I applaud your data. It's certainly true that the extraordinary turnout we're watching is multicausal - it reflects voter frustration with the status quo, the presence of a competitive race with two outstanding candidates, and, as you note, a remarkable percentage of first time voters. And it's a fair and valid point that, even as Democratic turnout surges, simply replicating the primary turnout in November isn't going to be enough to win any red states.

But perhaps we can take a closer look at one of the Super Tuesday states where you'd expect to see the biggest changes - Georgia - and shed light on why people are so excited. Back in 2004, there was a great deal of dissatisfaction with the Bush presidency, and a tight, competitive race. In fact, John Kerry slipped by John Edwards in Georgia just 47-41, a much narrower margin than we saw this past Tuesday. As you note, we saw a huge jump in the number of voters this time around, from 602k to more than a million. Yet a careful look finds a very different primary electorate, not just in raw numbers, but in composition:

2004 2008
Voters 18-29: 11% 17%
Blacks: 47% 51%
Women: 56% 63%
Independents: 19% 19%

And translating that data into raw numbers, you find:

2004 2008
Voters 18-29: 66k 178k
Blacks: 283k 502k
Women: 337k 661k
Independents: 114k 199k

So young voters, women, and blacks are headed to the polls in almost twice the numbers as they were last time around, and they compose higher percentages of Democratic voters. Crucially, for November, the primary also attracted an extra 85k independent voters. There, the percentage held steady - even though in 2004 George W. Bush ran unnopposed in the Republican Primary (drawing 100% of the vote), meaning that the Democratic race was the only game in town for independent voters. We might reasonably have expected that the Democratic race, this year, would have drawn not only a lower percentage of independents, but also a lower number.

Now, in the end, all of this optimism rests on a basic assumption. In every presidential election to date, the number of voters who cast ballots in a given party's primary is significantly lower than the number of voters that party attracts in November. Like most pundits, I'm assuming that the higher turnout in the primary will translate into an even higher turnout in the general election, as well. In Georgia in 2004, the November Democratic vote was 227% of the March primary turnout - and that was with John Kerry heading the ticket, when a third of primary voters told pollsters they'd be dissatisfied if he was their nominee. Obviously, 2.27x not a realistic multiplier this time around. But more people always come out for the general election - that's just the way it works.

We may be wrong. It could be the case that the turnout on Tuesday was simply (or largely) a function of all the people who would have voted in November heading to the polls in February. This is an unusual election, by any measure, so it's possible. All we have to guide us here is historical precedent, and that's been a poor guide indeed thus far this cycle. It's also possible that if Obama loses, embittered black and young voters stay at home; or if Clinton loses, women won't flock to the polls in numbers quite so large. But the bottom line, as far as I'm concerned, is that people are voting in the primaries in numbers that eclipse even competitive primaries in past years, and that bodes very well indeed for November.