Election officials say turnout is extremely low in many Iowa precincts on this primary day. Scott County Auditor Karen Fitzsimmons expects turnout to be in the 10 percent range in the Davenport area. “It appears to be a typical primary, kind of slow, but kind of steady,” Fitzsimmons says. “Not a whole lot of people.”
Black Hawk County Auditor Grant Veeder predicts Waterloo-area turnout will be in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent of eligible voters. By 10 o’clock, 2127 people had voted in all of Black Hawk County.
Dubuque County Auditor Denise Dolan has also been predicting turnout of 15 to 20 percent in her area. “So far it seems to be fairly light,” Dolan says of turnout today. Early voting requests were higher than Dubuque County’s Auditor had expected. Over 1300 Dubuque County voters asked for absentee ballots and all but 200 of those have been returned.
Turnout in Iowa’s largest county is light as well according to Polk County Auditor Michael Mauro. About 62-hundred Democrats and Republicans had voted at Polk County polling places by mid-morning. Mauro estimates 23,000 Democrats will vote today. There are 99,000 Democrats registered in Polk County. That would mean turnout of about 22 percent. “That isn’t very much,” Mauro says.
Mauro is the Democrat running for Secretary of State. Two Republicans — Bob Dopf and Chuck Allison — are on the G-O-P ballot today seeking the chance to run against Mauro in the general election.
The statewide race drawing the most attention is among the Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for governor, however. There are about 587,000 registered Democrats in Iowa today, and the voting experts predict about 100,000 will cast votes in today’s Democratic primary.