The Czar was leafing through the Muscovy Crier the other day, looking for the police blotter so he can see which neighbors’s teens got pinched for public intoxication when he spotted a comment about local voting turnout.

The Czar immediately latched onto the statement that voting turnout was the lowest in the county’s recent history—a shocker, given how he keeps hearing that 2014 will be a monumental election for Republicans. However, he was heartened to see the columnist explain that Republican turnout was very high—but Democratic turnout was so low that, added together, overall turnout was down. Democratic turnout in DuPage County, Illinois, was low? What—both of them didn’t vote?

Hah! We kid, of course: there’s something like 80 Democrats around here.

This seems to be trending nationally: at the National Review’s Pop-Under Ad and Browser Lockup Corner, John Fund wrote a nice and short piece about an emerging and repetitive pattern about elections so far: in Virginia, Florida, and California, Democrats are not voting. Nationally, we see that Democrats are not turning out for primary elections.

Okay, here comes the voice of caution. While Virginia, Florida, and California are good examples of Republican victories due to low Democrat votes, we cannot necessarily extend this to the general election in November. Here’s why.

The author of the Muscovy Crier piece dug deeper into the voting results and made an astonishingly simple discovery: the main reason Democrats were not voting in many of Illinois’ primary elections is because—ready?—there weren’t a heck of a lot of Democratic candidates running against each other.

In a few sample ballots the Czar looked at, this seems to have been the case: Republicans all over the state are competing against each other, and pretty much all hot contests throughout Illinois were Republican ones. Nearly all Democrat candidates were running unopposed in the primaries. So why vote?

This will obviously not be the case in November, when most elections will have candidates from both parties. While the initial indicators seem to suggest low Democrat turnout, Republican candidates would be well-advised to keep up the messaging efforts.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.