Mike Wolanin | The Republic A view of the vote center at NexusPark in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, May 7, 2024.
Bartholomew County on Tuesday saw its lowest turnout for a presidential primary in at least 64 years, according to county records.
Just 17.75% of registered voters in Bartholomew County cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary — down from 32% in 2020, 41% in 2016 and the lowest turnout in the county for a presidential primary since at least 1960, according to county records and previous coverage in The Republic.
Before Tuesday’s primary, the lowest turnout in the county since 1960 was in 2000, when 19% of voters cast ballots.
Overall, 9,321 Bartholomew County voters voted in Tuesday’s primary.
“It’s a disappointing turnout,” said Bartholomew County Clerk Shari Lentz. “…It was a steady stream of people all day but just not the turnout that we had hoped and expected.”
As early in-person voting got off to a slower-than-anticipated start last month, local election officials and party leaders have said that noncompetitive races for the GOP and Democratic nominations for president may have contributed to lower-than-anticipated turnout.
Current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump had already secured enough delegates the win their parties’ nominations for president before early in-person voting started in Indiana.
Just 5.95% of registered voters voted early in-person or absentee by mail, the lowest percentage in more than a decade. By comparison, 20% in 2020 and 12% in 2016, but higher than 2012, when about 2% of voters cast absentee-by-mail ballots or voted early in-person.
The 2020 figures include the record 8,311 voters who cast absentee-by-mail ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think that carries a lot of weight in this election,” Lentz said. “…Looking back at (2016), we did still have the presidential candidates in play when we had our primary in May. I’m sure that may have affected the turnout some today.”
While Trump has secured enough GOP delegates to win a majority vote at the Republican National Convention this summer, just over 1 in 4 Republican voters in Bartholomew County refused to back the former president in Tuesday’s primary.
Nearly 28% of Republican voters in Bartholomew County voted for Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who suspended her bid for the Republican presidential nomination in March.
Biden ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
For his part, Bartholomew County Democratic Party Chair Ross Thomas said previously that he was not surprised that turnout on the Democratic side had been low, as “there’s just not a lot on our side to vote for in a primary.”
“Of course, we still encourage people to vote in the primary,” Thomas said. “But as far as our local races, there is not a lot that is contested.”
The lower turnout this primary also may be driven by voter apathy, particularly with the presumptive rematch between Trump and Biden, said Aaron Dusso, an associate professor of political science at IUPUI.
“We’ve seen in some recent polls that have come out in the AP where just excitement for the election coming up is certainly lower than it was four years ago, quite a bit lower,” Dusso said. “It’s kind of average for the long-term trend line, but people seem to be turned off more by politics.”
“The top (of the ticket) matters because that is what people see more than anything else,” Dusso added. “…The politics is still that (it’s) Biden versus Trump at this point. A lot of people are turned off by that and perhaps this lack of enthusiasm is trickling down to those lower- level (races.)”
