A cursory look at the voting numbers in Delaware suggest plenty of room for growth for the DelDem party and the liberal movement. But, if they got their act together again, Republicans are not out of the picture. It is a function of who mobilizes unregistered and non-participating voters to capitalize on this opportunity.
As of 2012, I estimate that there were 870,000 Delawarians age-eligible to vote but with only about 627,000 of them registered. Adjusting for around 15,000 ineligible felons, this leaves about 225,000 ripe for registration. Does the Democratic Party mount significant registration campaigns of this scale? Anybody?
In 2012, Dems pulled about 300,000 votes. I roughly estimate this is of approximately 397,000 potential Dem votes. There’s quite a dropoff for Obama, who got 243,000 votes in 2012. he should have gotten about 335,000. Governor Markell bested Obama by about 34,000 votes; Carper, 23,000, Carney 7,500. This is strange in my experience because the top of the ticket (President) usually does better than down ballot in many other states. Wonder what this means?
When you combine the approximately 80,000 registered missed potential 2012 Democrat votes and let’s say 48% Democrat potential registrations of the 138,000 unregistered, or about 66,000, Democrats/Liberals have nearly 150,000 untapped potential votes to secure their position against crazy teabaggers and Republicans.
OK, here’s my weasel on this. I am not a statistician, which may be obvious to some. These are ballpark, rounded, approximations. But, this is an attempt to explore potential for our side. The Democratic Party has the primary voting demographics available that can give a targeting strategy of the groups/areas with the highest potential to mobilize. Hope they’ll be looking at this with a sharp eye and stout heart.