GOP Primary Turnout Plummets To 6%

Angela Hatley woke up at three in the morning, and at 4:30 a.m. she arrived to set up the Betsy Ross School polling place. 

She then spent the following 16 hours waiting for a grand total of one voter to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

Hatley, an assistant registrar who happens to be a registered Democrat, was one of six poll workers operating the Ward 5 polling place at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in the Hill. 

The group worked from dawn until after dusk to keep the polling place open for the Republican U.S. Senate primary.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. By the time the polls closed at 8 p.m., Hatley said, the sole person to vote there was one of her fellow poll workers. 

Turnout in New Haven — and statewide – was low on Tuesday for the primary between Matthew Corey and Gerry Smith, two Republicans seeking a place on November’s general election ballot to challenge two-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy. 

Turnout among New Haven Republicans was under 6 percent. Across the state, Connecticut Republican turnout for the primary was just over 7 percent.

At seven New Haven polling places open on Tuesday, not a single Republican voted. At another four polling places, only one Republican showed up. Only two of those 11 polling places were open for another election, the Democratic primary for the 94th state assembly district (which saw an 18 percent turnout among eligible New Haven Democrats). So nine polling locations saw no more than one voter. 

Across New Haven, only seven polling places saw more than five Republican voters trickle through on Tuesday.

In total, 142 Republicans voted in-person in New Haven on Tuesday. Another 24 voted by absentee ballots, and a total of seven voted in a new early voting process. 

Out of 3,013 eligible Republicans, that made for a 6 percent turnout. 

That’s less than half the voter participation rate of the last Republican senate primary in 2022, during which 16.5 percent of registered Republicans in New Haven came out to vote for either Themis Klarides, Leora Levy, or Peter Lumaj. 

One possible factor for that drop, noted New Haven Republican Town Committee Chair John Carlson, is that there was also a Republican primary for Secretary of State that year. ​“Levy and Klarides had a lot more money than these two candidates, so they pushed out a lot,” Carlson said.

The decision between Corey and Smith this week ​“was a tough choice for a lot of Republicans to make,” he added, but argued that both are ​“far superior to Chris Murphy.”

More broadly, he added, ​“a lot of people aren’t interested in primaries unless it’s presidential or gubernatorial. … I don’t think we’re gonna have any issue with turning out votes in November. It’s a presidential election.”

The winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary statewide, Matthew Corey, wrote in a statement, ​“I’ve been too focused on the issues impacting Connecticut citizens to really hone in on the turnout in any specific town.”

While he won the statewide race, Corey lost to Smith in New Haven with 83 total votes to Smith’s 87.

For most of the day, Hatley said, she and her other poll workers at Betsy Ross School at 150 Kimberly Ave. chatted to entertain one another. They aren’t allowed to talk about politics at the polls, she said, so the group mostly stuck to their personal lives. 

“One lady was showing pictures of the wedding she had went to recently,” Hatley recalled. 

Much of the day also involved ​“looking out the window,” Hatley said, and wondering about the people walking by: ​“Are they coming to vote?”

Poll workers in New Haven get paid between $265 and $500 for each exceptionally long election day (as well as the mandatory training they have to complete beforehand), according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. 

Hatley, who’s worked regularly at the polls on election day for over a decade, called the one-person turnout at her polling place ​“very disheartening.” She recalled how her own mother would bring her to the polls when she was a little kid. ​“People died for this right,” she said. ​“I don’t understand why it’s not important to some people to get out and vote.”

According to Hatley, one Republican arrived at the polls in the late morning, but his name wasn’t on the list. As the assistant registrar, Hatley called the Registrar of Voters’ office downtown — and learned that because this voter had switched parties within 90 days of the primary, he wasn’t yet eligible to vote as a Republican. 

About three or four Democrats showed up on Tuesday as well, not realizing that the only race taking place was a Republican Party primary.

That left one of Hatley’s fellow poll workers to cast the sole vote at that polling station between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

But November, Hatley believes, will be different: ​“I expect the lines to be out the door.”