Something we were told to expect in this off-year election was that angry voters would turn out in large numbers, starting with this summer’s primary elections, to express their outrage at various government policies.
It’s true that the primaries in Colorado had a big turnout. It was the biggest in a generation. But it can’t compete with 1974, the post-Watergate election year. If anything, voters then may have been even more extravagantly unhappy than they are now.
In this year’s primaries, on Aug. 10, roughly 48 percent of “active” Republicans (or 39 percent of all registered Republicans, including the electorally dormant) voted. Nearly 20,000 fewer voted in the governor’s race than voted for U.S. senator, reflecting a certain drop-off in the level of excitement for the party’s gubernatorial choices.
Democrats, who had only one big primary vote, for U.S. senator, were somewhat less enthusiastic. Just over 41 percent of active Democrats mailed in their ballots or showed up at the polls — or, looked at another way, just 32 percent of all Democrats, active and inactive.
The Democrats’ overall Senate vote was 40,000 less than the GOP’s total less-than-enthusiastic vote for governor.
All things considered, these might seem like pretty good numbers. In recent Colorado primaries, turnout has been in the teens (2006) or low 20s (2008).
This year, though, about 80 percent of the people eligible to vote in the primaries were in counties using mail-in ballots exclusively. And in those counties, turnout was heartening — half of the party members in many counties. In Baca County, in the state’s southeast corner, 81 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans voted by mail.
But the overall numbers are puny compared to 1974, when more than half of each major party’s voters showed up at the polls on Sept. 10. Colorado’s primary election came less than five weeks after President Richard Nixon had resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
Republicans could be excused if they chose to sulk and fret at home, but nearly 51 percent of them voted in their primaries that year. And Democrats, perhaps in celebration, had an even better showing — a 55 percent turnout. And those numbers are based on total party registrations; the secretary of state’s office in those days didn’t differentiate between “active” and “inactive” voters.
Looking back, one would have to say that voters were pretty angry, frustrated and fearful then, too. Except that it was the left that was scaring people, not the right.
Students and hippies and minorities were either rioting in the streets or smoking pot. They wore strange costumes and used bad words. They expressed disgust for the government and for the “establishment.” They were out to defeat “the man.” And this sort of thing had been going on for years. It was much more persistent than the comparatively recent flare-up of Tea Party insurgency.
There were more Democrats than Republicans in Colorado in 1974. The war in Vietnam had been dragging on, and then there was Watergate. In total numbers today, there are again more Democrats, by about 4,000. But Republicans are ahead in that important “active” voter category, by about 38,000.
Both parties had governor primaries in 1974. John Vanderhoof, the unelected incumbent — as lieutenant governor, he took over when John Love went to Washington to join the Nixon administration — defeated cable television pioneer Bill Daniels by a 3-to-2 margin.
Democrat Dick Lamm defeated Democrat Tom Farley by almost the same margin. Gary Hart won a three-way Democratic primary over more established competition. They both won in November. Youth, unconformity and a restless electorate prevailed. In 1974, anyway.
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News.
