A question that keeps coming up is "what will turnout be on primary day, June 9?" Given that there hasn't been a serious primary for governor on the Democratic side since 1977, nobody really knows the answer. About the only thing we can do is look at past elections and try to extrapolate. Here are some numbers for Arlington County's turnout in previous gubernatorial primaries, courtesy of election guru and Arlington Treasurer Frank O'Leary.1969: 16.9% (12,030 votes out of 71,000 registered voters)
1977: 17.2% (13,850 votes out of 80,400 registered voters)
This year in Arlington, there's also a hotly contested Democratic primary for House of Delegates in the 47th district. In previous years, turnout has been higher where there have been local races like this one. For instance, overall turnout for Arlington in 2005 (when there was no gubernatorial primary but there were four Democrats running for the LG nomination) was just 3.8%. In contrast, turnout in Arlington's portion of the 45th House of Delegates district -- where David Englin, Libby Garvey, and four other candidates were running in a closely contested race -- was nearly 9 points higher, at 12.5%.
Given this historical information, my guess is that turnout in Arlington County on June 9 will almost certainly be greater than 12%, but probably lower than 20%. Of course, it's certainly possible that an exciting governor's race, plus the 47th House of Delegates contest, could drive turnout even higher, but for now I'm staying relatively cautious (and also with a wide range) and guessing 12%-20% turnout.
Now, anyone care to repeat this exercise for other counties in Virginia? :)
UPDATE: Bryan Scrafford makes an excellent point in the comments section: "something that's worth considering is that we saw just under an 18% turnout in a special election for Braddock District Supervisor yesterday -- a race that didn't receive much media attention and also was in area where people were dealing with a wee bit of voter fatigue as they had just voted in a special election for county chairman a few weeks beforehand."
