I am savouring the thought of the rock-ribbed Republicans of New Hampshire voting for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. I just wonder if there wasn't a small earthquake caused by William Loeb turning in his grave.

Posted July 9, 2008 10:48 AM by Fragano Ledgister

I'm a little boggled by all the write-in votes for Democrats ont the GOP ballots. I suppose that there might be the equivalent on the Democratic ballots, too.

Posted July 9, 2008 11:01 AM by P J Evans

Wow, Obama and Clinton both beat Duncan Hunter. Not that Hunter was ever a viable candidate, but at least he was actually running for the Republican nomination.

I do wonder who the 15 Republicans who voted for Kucinich are. There must be an interesting story there.

Given how the Democrats have turned out in overwhelming numbers compared to the Republicans in the primaries, I don't think the race is as close as the media makes it sound. However, the media has traditionally made the presidential campaign sound as much like a close horse race as possible. I guess it's more fun for them to cover that way?

Posted July 9, 2008 11:08 AM by John Chu

Here are the Republican write-ins on Democratic ballots in New Hampshire this year:

McCain 255
Romney 186
Huckabee 65
Paul 49
Giuliani 45

All other Republican candidates: 0

"Others" 32

Posted July 9, 2008 11:17 AM by James D. Macdonald

What does it mean for someone to have a zero?

Posted July 9, 2008 11:18 AM by Bill Higgins-- Beam Jockey

For someone to have a zero? No one voted for that person in the New Hampshire primary.

Specifically, on this list, that means that no Republican wrote in that Democrat on a Republican ballot, or no Democrat wrote in that Republican on a Democratic ballot.

Posted July 9, 2008 11:24 AM by James D. Macdonald

Vermin Supreme has a comedy routine where he wears a boot on his head and talks on an electric megaphone. He was running for mayor of the United States a few years back. His best line: "I support nuclear power because radiation causes cancer, cancer is a growth, and I support growth."

Essentially a guerrilla theater comedian/protester who is in it for publicity/egoboo/fun

Posted July 9, 2008 11:24 AM by Erik Nelson

All of the Republican write-ins on Democratic ballots combined came to fewer votes than write-ins for John Edwards alone on Republican ballots.

Posted July 9, 2008 11:27 AM by James D. Macdonald

But in this snapshot it does show that in January 2008, in New Hampshire, Obama had a slight edge on Clinton among registered Republicans. McCain thinks New Hampshire is in play? Nope. Not a chance.

Isn't this just the sort of tactical voting you see in primaries, with those Republican write-ins being intended to give the edge to a Democratic candidate that could be easily beat in the real election?

Posted July 9, 2008 12:02 PM by Martin Wisse

Crazification line...
While I understand the basic idea, in this situation I don't see a vote for Mike Gravel, especially in a primary situation, as any more 'crazy' than a vote for Fred Thompson. The idea that voting for somebody because you agree with their principles, because they are the candidate who best represents you, just isn't that crazy. Voting for a candidate who won't win is pretty much the reason that Obama is the presumptive nominee for the Democrats this year.

Posted July 9, 2008 12:18 PM by Cyrano Jones

You tend to see this sort of tactical voting against party A mostly when the nomination for party B is already settled. In this case, the Republican nomination was undecided, and I expect most Republicans felt more strongly about choosing the best candidate for themselves than for trying to spoil the election.

Now, for the later primaries, I'm sure there was more of this type of nonsense. Another reason for closed primaries - the candidate is representing a particular party, and it makes no more sense for the opposition to get a vote than it does for US citizens to vote for the Canadian Parliament.

Posted July 9, 2008 12:31 PM by Ursula L

Isn't this just the sort of tactical voting you see in primaries, with those Republican write-ins being intended to give the edge to a Democratic candidate that could be easily beat in the real election?

No. These were write-ins on the Republican ballots. There's no way either Obama nor Clinton would have possibly been the Republican presidential nominee.

Posted July 9, 2008 12:38 PM by James D. Macdonald

Geary Gravel got 5 votes?

Posted July 9, 2008 12:41 PM by Serge

There may have been some Independents who picked up Republican ballots in order to vote for Romney to keep a weak candidate going, and there may have been some Independents who picked up Democratic ballots to vote for Clinton because they thought that she was least likely to win a national election.

But registered Republicans had to get Republican ballots and registered Democrats had to get Democratic ballots.

I see write-ins for the opposite party being a sign that the registered members of the party are unhappy with the choices before them.

These write-ins are votes that wouldn't count in any case, and if not for the recount might never have been reported at all.

Posted July 9, 2008 12:45 PM by James D. Macdonald

I don't see a vote for Mike Gravel, especially in a primary situation, as any more 'crazy' than a vote for Fred Thompson.

Remember that Mike Gravel wasn't on the ballot.

Posted July 9, 2008 12:47 PM by James D. Macdonald

Ursula @11 - I dunno, now that I live in a state with open primaries (you don't register by party, just say which ballot you want when you walk into the polling place), I find closed primaries less and less attractive. (Not that they stop cross-party shenannigans - I forget which state Rush was exhorting folks to change their registration in time to vote, but there were a few bragging about having done it; illegally, as it turns out.)

I don't think enough people do it to make a difference, honestly. If I had known how the elections would go, I would have voted for Huckabee. (At the time, he was still tweaking McCain, and Obama got the dem vote by, what, 70% in VA?) Of course, that's the thing - you never know before the fact. And if enough people think they "know" their guy's gonna win and go screw around with the other election instead, then the crazies in their own party get to push their guy up to the top - so you'd get Clinton vs. Tancredo or something.

And while the nominee is the representative for their party, the idea is that they're trying to be the president for the whole country. If, by some bizarre twist of fate, the Republicans were running someone whose policies I agreed with, and the Democrats weren't, I'd like to retain the option of voting for the person I thought would make a good president. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that maybe primaries shouldn't be decided by a tiny percentage of True Believers, but I do think it would be an interesting experiment.

Posted July 9, 2008 1:08 PM by Cat Meadors

James D. MacDonald:
Remember that Mike Gravel wasn't on the ballot.

And also a member of another party. However, practically speaking, his odds of winning the Republican nomination were the same as Fred Thompson's.

Posted July 9, 2008 1:14 PM by Cyrano Jones

Some other useful totals, since I was playing with my calculator....

239793 total votes cast on Republican primary ballots.

4082 total write-in votes cast for Democratic candidates, which is almost exactly 2% of the total vote.

Posted July 9, 2008 1:55 PM by Brooks Moses

I do want to ask, though, now that I've had a moment to think about this -- what are typical numbers for this sort of thing? I assume that two percent of the votes being write-ins for opposite-party candidates is unusual, but that's completely an assumption. Does anyone have any data on "normal" here?

Posted July 9, 2008 2:02 PM by Brooks Moses

>>that Independents who wanted to vote for a Democrat would have picked up a Democratic ballot

I don't know what New Hampshire law is specifically, but where I live if you're registered Independent you're not allowed to vote in any party primary. You can change your voter's registration to one or the other as long as you do it at least 3 weeks (I think it is?) before the primary, but you can't just go get a ballot and vote.

It may make a difference that voting here (in Oregon) is 100% by mail, there *is* no way to get a ballot other than the one you've gotten in the mail to fill out, which probably helps them keep their primaries "pure".

Posted July 9, 2008 2:15 PM by Patch

In NH the system is: if you're a registered Democrat on the day of the primary, you get a Democratic ballot. If you're a registered Republican on the day of the primary, you get a Republican ballot. If you're a registered Independent, you can go in to the polling place, register as either Republican or Democrat as you choose, cast your votes in the appropriate primary, and then re-register yourself as an Independent.

As a result, quite a lot of people who aren't really Independent keep that as their party preference.

Posted July 9, 2008 3:22 PM by Kate

It bolsters my faith in humanity to see that four Democrats got more votes on the Republican ballot than Tom Tancredo.

Posted July 9, 2008 4:02 PM by mjfgates

Kate (#21): Massachusetts is similar, though here the special status is "Unenrolled". If you're unenrolled, you can pick any party's primary ballot. Voting in a presidential primary used to automatically enroll you in that party (primaries for state-level offices, the House, or the Senate didn't trigger it), but you could re-unenroll immediately. The law changed to remove the auto-enrollment between the 2004 and 2008 elections, IIRC.

There are also "political designations", which are basically parties that aren't big enough to matter; they don't have primaries, and if you're enrolled under one you don't get to vote in any party primaries either. A full list is available here; sadly, the tastily oxymoronic "Independent Voters Party" is no more[1], but we still have "Timesizing Not Downsizing"!

[1] There is the "American Independent Party", though.

Posted July 9, 2008 4:33 PM by Christopher Davis

I just wonder how many of the "Other" designees were actually written in as "none of the above."

Posted July 9, 2008 6:46 PM by Carl

OT. FISA passed. You can see how your Senators voted here

Posted July 9, 2008 7:41 PM by moe99

almost 5,000 republicans voted for democrats on their primary? Those are some pretty wild numbers.

If we can get obama in, and put more dems in the senate, maybe we can pull the country from the brink.

Posted July 9, 2008 9:00 PM by Greg London

Christopher @23

I suspect it would not be useful, for either me or the person listed as the contact, for me to pick up the phone and inquire about what the "Interdependent Third Party" is about. I have a vague idea of what the socialists, natural law party, prohibition party, libertarians, greens, and rainbow alliance are, though I may be mistaken in any given case, but "Interdependent Third Party" sounds like one person with A Theory. Then again, some of those others are five or ten or fifty people with A Theory.

Posted July 12, 2008 12:31 PM by Vicki

Vicki (#27): I'm pretty sure "Timesizing Not Downsizing" is one person with A Theory and also A Website. This at least cuts down on the need for phonecalls to figure out what the party platform is.

Posted July 12, 2008 4:57 PM by Christopher Davis

Vicki @27
A quick google says 'not much'. Apparently the one candidate they fielded not only lost, but also has since died.
The stories Google turns up indicate that it's people who checked a wrong box and wrote in 'independent' on whatever form Massachusetts is using, and the data entry people, having no instructions dealing with that particular set of data, picked the entry nearest to it on their lists.

Posted July 12, 2008 5:33 PM by P J Evans