Spoke to my brother from FL today, he said something interesting....

[roseBudd]

He said the independents were the largest block of voters in Florida and that as an independent he was not eligible to vote in the primary.

[jsamuel]

1. it was a closed primary, like OR and KY

[roseBudd]

2. Hmm, so closed primary wins are even more irrelevant to the GE than certain spinmeisters

would have us believe.

[samdogmom]

3. That would be the bottom line!

Hillary is forgetting that MANY independents and cross-over Republicans support Barrack. Her claim of a Florida "victory" is false in so many ways.....

But she has her dreams...why should we spoil them?

[jsamuel]

4. not necessarily

there are large portions of Democrats (like in N. Florida) who may have voted in the primary, but are not likely to vote for the Democrat unless they really like them.

[windbreeze]

5. I don't believe they can in Wash. State either, unless they have

an independent candidate running for the office...wb

[Barack_America]

6. Are closed primaries even democratic?

Considering that, in most states, the majority of voters end up being disenfranchised. And these voters, by and large, WILL end up voting for one of the two major party candidates.

I find it interesting that this question hasn't really been explored on DU, considering it has direct bearing on the Florida and Michigan decisions.

[lisa58]

7. That's right...

...my sister is an Independent too - couldn't vote in the primary

[Coexist]

8. that is correct.

[Orangepeel]

9. He's right that it is a closed primary, but incorrect that most voters are non-affiliated

I'm not sure what his larger point was. But for the record, as of book closing for the 2008 "presidential preference primary," there were 10,203,112 registered voters, 4,137,067 registered Democrats, 3,825,727 registered republicans and 1,911,510 voters with no party affiliation.

http://election.dos.state.fl.us/voterreg/pdf/2007/PPP2008_CountyParty.pdf

(Keep in mind that some percentage of those registered Democrats haven't voted for a Democrat in 45 years)

[quaker bill]

13. Not so much anymore

Democrats lagged well behind repugs in registrations from the 1980s until about 2004. If I recall correctly, we overtook the repugs in 2006. Most of the dixiecrats are now pushing up daisies, the few that remain switched to repug many years back. You see, because of closed primaries and a lack of competitive races, even lack of a Democratic candidate, the only way you could vote at all was registering repug. In FL, unopposed races are settled in the primary and do not appear on the Nov ballot. This led alot of people to switch simply to have any say at all.

Recent reforms have allowed primaries to become "open" if there are candidates from one party only. To prevent dems from having a say, often enough one repug will sign up to run on a third "minor" party ticket. As long as there are two parties in the race the primary stays closed.

More recently though, Howard Dean funded a full time staff presence in FL, and the DNC has now offered support for candidates to contest races. Most races are now contested by a dem, whereas in the 1980s they were not. This is part of why we gained 9 seats in the FL house in 2006.

[Captain Hilts]

10. The Dem primary had record turnout. nt

[roseBudd]

14. My brother votes for dems but he is registered independent

[petersjo02]

11. I had heard that from my FL friend

Her husband registered Indie so he couldn't vote for Obama. She voted Obama in his stead.

[quaker bill]

12. That would be correct

as one who works for democratic candidates in FL, this is correct info.