Tuesday’s primary saw better than average turnout, according to Secretary of the State Denise Merrill.
More voters turned out to vote on Tuesday than they did in the similar open governor’s race primary in 2010.
Turnout hovered around 30 percent overall, with registered Democrats coming in at 28.7 percent, while Republicans turned out at 31.72 percent.
“That’s encouraging and maybe that’s because we had such an extraordinary increase in voter registration,” said Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, who is a Democrat and is also seeking re-election in November. She did not have a primary opponent on Tuesday.
Republicans turned out more people to vote than in 2010, but they still lagged far behind Democratic participation.
Democrats sent 215,781 to the polls, while Republicans had 135,961 decide their five-way race for governor.
The Democratic Party has a significant registration advantage in Connecticut. They outnumber Republicans by a nearly two to one margin. Republicans have 428,612 registered party members to Democrats’ 751,467.
Two of the interesting trends that emerged from Tuesday had to do with two of the biggest storylines that came out of the evening.
Politics
Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim lost to Ned Lamont in what turned out to be a completely uncompetitive race. Lamont defeated Ganim by more than 60 points.
Ganim, a former convicted felon who spent seven years in federal prison, ran a race focused on the state’s largest cities. The strategy was to drive turnout out for Ganim in places like Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven and hope that would make it a competitive race.
While Ganim’s support was centralized in the cities, a warning of sorts came from his home city of Bridgeport.
Bridgeport Democrats case 5,009 ballots for Ganim, giving him a comfortable, but not overwhelming win over Lamont.
When Ganim won the Democratic Primary for mayor in 2015, defeating incumbent Bill Finch, registered Democrats gave him 6,264 votes.
Republican Gubernatorial Nominee Bob Stefanowski started his campaign with television ads at the beginning of 2018, and they were effective. He won by 10 points over his nearest challenger, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, while the remaining three contenders split about 50 percent of the vote.
Stefanowski emerged from Tuesday with victories in 116 out of 169 cities and towns.
