Florida Primary Turnout Short of Hopes

The number of voters in the Florida Republican primary Tuesday was 14 percent below the 2008 level, a setback to Republican leaders who are hoping that party members will surge to the polls in November out of an intense eagerness to oust President Barack Obama.

The turnout drop in Florida comes after nominating contests in three other states -- Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina -- cheered GOP leaders by drawing more voters than in 2008.

The decline in Florida is attributable, in part, to an unusual circumstance: The 2008 primary had attracted an influx of voters for a popular ballot initiative to limit property taxes.

Still, "people were talking about potential record turnout, and it's not even close," said Curtis Gans, a voting expert at the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington, D.C.

Some Florida analysts said the barrage of negative advertising in the primary there may have turned voters off even more than in other states.

"There was an instantaneous deluge of negativity -- overnight," said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "The personal-minutiae attacks in a state with massive economic problems made for a huge disconnect for Republican voters."

Many Republicans were encouraged by the increase in voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. Those increases -- two percent in Iowa and greater than three percent in New Hampshire -- led to record numbers of voters casting GOP ballots in those states.

South Carolina saw a far bigger increase in GOP ballots cast -- 603,856, up from 445,499 in 2008. But even that increase fell short of analysts' expectations and did not keep pace with population growth in the state.

While the absolute number of South Carolina voters rose, Gans calculated that 17.3 percent of the state's citizens who were old enough to vote cast ballots in the primary -- down from the 2000 record of 19.5 percent. Read more:WSJ