Californians more motivated by Gay Marriage than Obama v. McCain

With nearly the entire vote in, California has produced a very stranger result. Residents had the opportunity to vote in the presidential race as well as on 12 statewide propositions and a number of local and regional elections. Turnout in presidential elections is normally up compared to non-presidential years, and is partially driven by people who vote for president, but leave the rest of their ballot blank.

However, this year, it appears that an even larger number of people turned out to vote exclusively on Proposition 8 (from the LA Times with 95.4% reporting).



I can imagine the sort of person who would cast a presidential-only ballot, but fail to read through the propositions. I have much more difficulty imagining the ~30,000 people who went in to vote on just Proposition 8, and while they were there, decided not to fill in a bubble for president.