[quote=zk]If it’s Hillary vs. Trump, I don’t think the democratic turnout will be low. Not because anybody’s super-excited about Hillary, but because they’d be super-excited about making sure Trump didn’t win…. [/quote]I see the predominantly blue precincts in “problem spots” (such as population centers adjacent to the Int’l Border) as turning from blue to purple or red in the coming months. In other words, a portion of registered dems will re-register in states with closed primaries before their respective primary elections take place. It’s not going to affect the dem base much in solid dem locales such as SF and the peninsula (north and south, incl SV and Marin Co) or the front range of CO but it will affect the million + population in precincts along the Rio Grande Valley (likely 1M+ total pop in the “metropolises” of El Paso/Juarez, McAllen/Reynosa and Brownsville/Matamoros who are tired of putting up with flood of poor Mexican immigrants into their communities.
I believe the precincts in the states of NM and AZ are already mostly red, and, in any case, the population along the border in these states is negligible. I predict El Centro/Mexicali will stay mostly blue and South County SD (pop ~400,000 in five cities) will slowly turn purple/red in the coming months). Tijuana has a population of over 3M which is contributing to a lot of residential “spillover” within four miles of the border on the US side.
I don’t know if this phenomenon is enough to “convert” longtime registered dems to Repubs and I haven’t investigated which states have closed primaries, thus causing registered dems/independents to actually have to make the effort to re-register in order to vote for Trump in the primaries. It’s going to be interesting to see how all this pans out.
Of course, it’s a crapshoot what voters will decide in the general election (regardless of their registration).
