I’m free thinking while I write this, so feel free to clap back at me if you disagree or have thoughts.
Yesterday’s primary election in KY-4 where Thomas Massie lost to the MAGA candidate started to solidify my thinking on primaries, voter turnout and party dynamics.
It seemed to me the evil genius of the Tea Party when it first emerged and subsequently morphed into MAGA was/is their willingness to show up in primaries.
While I don’t have the exact 2026 data from yesterday’s primary in KY, the numbers from 2024 voting data and 2026 population data can help tell the tale (note: Presidential election cycles like 2024 generally have higher turnout than “off-year” non-Presidential elections cycles).
Bear with me.
The population of KY-4 in January 2026 was approximately 776,000
The number of registered voters in KY-4 in January 2026 was approx. 597,000 (or 77% of the total population
The total number of votes in the Republican primary in KY-4 yesterday was approx. 106,000, or 18% of registered voters (this is unusually high for an “off-year” election; the total number of votes in the 2024 Republican primary in KY-4 was 54,000, or 9% of all registered voters)
The MAGA winner in KY-4, Ed Gallrein, received approx. 58,000 votes, or just under 10% of all registered voters in KY-4 (as an FYI, in 2024, the 50%+1 number needed to win the Republican primary was approx. 27,001 votes, or 4.5% of registered voters)
Gallrein’s winning margin over Thomas Massie was approx. 10,000 votes, or about 1.7% of all registered voters in KY-4
BTW, turnout for young people is much lower. In KY-4 in 2024, turnout for 17-34-year-olds (for both parties) was 4.5% of registered voters
Finally, the people who turnout for primaries tend to - obviously - be the most politically engaged people who skew further out on the Bell Curve
The result is that in non-competitive “red” districts, we can extrapolate that somewhere between 5% and 10% of all registered voters in KY-4 determines the winner of not just the primary election, but also the general election. And those who do vote in the primary tend to skew heavily TP/MAGA.
I’m not sure the Tea Party consciously realized this when it coalesced in the early 2010s, but it was - and is - their “evil genius”: their willingness to primary incumbents, especially in deep red districts. This “willingness to primary” had dual benefits. Either 1) the TP/MAGA candidate wins, or 2) the more “moderate” incumbent must tack further right in order to win the primary.
Now, there are downsides to this “strategy” (I put that in quotes because I’m not sure it’s always a considered strategy - it may just be a result of TP/MAGA being TP/MAGA). In competitive congressional districts (which gerrymandering has reduced considerably) and statewide Senate races (which cannot be gerrymandered), TP/MAGA primary winners - or “moderate” Republican primary winners who have tacked further right - may have more difficulty winning the general election (2010 examples: Christine O’Donnell in DE, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado). However, R incumbents who do win their primary after tacking further right, and then win the general election, serve to move the “Overton Window” - the accepted mainstream “norm” - much further to the right.
Let me repeat to be clear. In most deep red congressional districts, it only takes a single digit percentage of all registered/eligible voters to determine who goes to DC as a congressperson. And 80% (or more) of eligible voters don’t vote in primaries.
Is there a lesson here for Democrats, or is this just a TP/MAGA phenomenon?
Democrats historically gnash their teeth at primarying incumbents. It’s somehow viewed as disloyalty or a waste of financial resources or unnecessary internecine fighting. Basically, IMHO, Dems historically prefer intra-party civility to moving their candidates and elected officials in the policy direction their base generally prefers. The results over the past 10-20 years have - to put it mildly - not been optimal.
So put me in the camp of encouraging Democratic primaries, especially in today’s world where the “institutionalist” wing of the party seems so out of touch with not just their base, but frankly, the vast majority of voters in the U.S. who are struggling and see a political class that doesn’t seem to care about them.
Let’s rouse our engaged 5-10% in primaries and see what happens.
Thoughts?
