GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Today’s Primary Election may have more of a story to tell than just who will end up on the ballot in November.
Charles Jacobs, Political Science Professor at St. Norbert College says voter turnout will start to answer a big question.
“We may see whether or not we are going to see some surge in Democratic interest in some of the candidates that are out there that might pose some difficulty for Republicans.
Jacobs says voter turnout may determine if Republicans can hold off the highly talked about Blue wave in the future.
“If they want to ensure that Trump succeeds, they need to get out to the polls, and if Democrats hope to undermine his ability, they need to get out the polls so that is why I suspect we are going to see slightly higher than typical turnout, although it might not be record-breaking in any sense.”
He says if the numbers are high for the Democrat elections, it may give Republicans a little scare especially since voter turnout is traditionally lower for midterm primary elections.
“So if you see a groundswell of interest in some of these primaries and you start to see turnout creep over 20 percent, that might suggest that there are a lot of interested voters.”
He says a high turnout may indicate a strong motivation for change which could serve as an alert to incumbents.
In Wisconsin primary elections, voters can only vote for races in their declared party meaning they can’t vote in both the Democrat governor race and for the Republican Senate candidate.
