Thousands of volunteers from around the state spent most of their Saturday assisting with the GOP caucus. My own experience was positive - the event went off smoothly and overall, the event accomplished its goal - to elect delegates to the national convention. (Surprise - Trump won handily.)
Not everyone is happy, however. There were two main criticisms that I am seeing about the caucus - confusion over the closing time and the low turnout. Let’s look at both of these.
Closing Time Confusion
From my travels across social media, this was not an isolated incident but happened in a lot of places. Because the time the caucus ended was not well publicized, people showed up after it was closed and were not able to vote. That is unfortunate and I think even those who ran caucus locations have acknowledged that was a miss.
But let’s put it into perspective. At my location, we had about 1100 voters who managed to show up in time to cast their vote. Those that came after we closed the caucus were maybe a dozen. That is about 1 percent. If you think the day is defined by the 1 percent rather than the 99 percent who did not have any trouble getting to the caucus in time, I think you are missing the forest for the trees.
Turnout
Doing a statewide analysis is quite involved given the way data is provided both at the caucus website and the Secretary of State website. So, I focused on Ada County and see no reason why the data would not be similar in other counties.
I extrapolated the 2024 number from the caucus website total votes (39,584) multiplied by .3, the rough percentage of Ada voters to the state total.
This shows the 2024 turnout is about half that of 2020 and about 24% of the 2016 election. So yes, the turnout did not meet past levels.
2016 was a contentious race which makes sense the turnout would be high. Four candidates (Cruz, Trump, Rubio and Kasich) all garnered more than 5,000 votes (Nikki Haley got about 1500).
But 2020, like 2024, was really not a contest. The total of the non-Trump vote was about the same as Nikki Haley’s total but with twice the turnout. The 2020 turnout may also have been impacted by Covid fears, though the ‘15 days to stop the steal’ was launched about a week after the Idaho primary (March 10).
So, I think the turnout is an issue but again, in perspective, would a higher turnout impact the outcome? No. And with a caucus, there is no early voting and no absentee voting, which can account for about 35% of the total vote, so I don’t see this caucus turnout was somehow out of bounds in terms of turnout expectations.
Going Forward
I haven’t come across anyone who is gung-ho about doing caucuses in the future. There was really very little choice to do this in 2024 due to the removal of the presidential primary after the 2023 legislative session. So, I am not disagreeing that it had to be done.
But what I witnessed was that this caucus was a ‘time suck’ of so many volunteers who could have been spending time monitoring the legislative session, fund raising for candidates, doing get out the vote efforts, or just spending more time with friends and family. The opportunity cost of the caucus is substantial. For that reason, I hope we never have to do this again.
A bill has been proposed to restore the presidential primary to the third Tuesday in April and move the regular primary from May to the same date. This would satisfy public sentiment expressed in a BSU study that the majority would like both primaries to occur on the same day.
However, I believe this is a ‘split the baby’ solution but without a ‘Solomonic’ resolution. The later presidential primary makes it less likely that Idaho participates in that effort, not only not having its voice heard but missing out on significant revenue that a contentious primary could bring.
The earlier regular primary also means less time for a campaign after the legislative session ends (generally at the end of March but it may go even longer).
I don’t see any good solution that combines both primaries and believe we need to restore what we had prior to the 2023 legislative session. A presidential primary in March and the regular primary in May.
We know this can work even if it does cost a little more money and stresses the clerks to hold the regular primary so soon after the presidential primary every four years.
Yes, it did take a lot of time away from governmental issues, work, and family. I did like that most the voters were engaged people politically. They knew what was going on and the issues. That was an upside.
Superb analysis Tim! Thanks, you always hot the mark.