Timothy Egan runs some numbers on the GOP race thus far:
So far, three million voters have participated in the Republican races, less than the population of Connecticut. This means that 89 percent of all registered voters in those states [that have held caucuses or primaries] have not participat
ed in what is, from a horse-race perspective, a very tight contest. Yes, we know Republicans don’t like their choices; it’s a meh primary. But still, in some states, this election could be happening in a ghost town. Less than 1 percent of registered voters turned out for Maine’s caucus. In Nevada, where Republican turnout was down 25 percent from 2008, only 3 percent of total registered voters participated. This is not majority rule by any measure; it barely qualifies as participatory democracy.
He concludes that “the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian and unrepresentative of the nation at large.”
