2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: 12.8%. That's the margin Hillary won CA by. Remember those suspect polls that were [View all]onenote
(42,702 posts)2008 was a unique year. Democratic primary turnout was at record levels everywhere. California, whose primary was held early in the campaign, had an astonishing turnout rate of 74 percent.
In other years (and this information can be gleaned from the detailed reports that the California Secretary of State publishes and puts online after every election), the turnout in the Democratic primary has been between 43 and 48 percent. (This covers 1992, 2000, and 2004; I'm not including 1996 and 2012 because in those years there was an unopposed incumbent president on the ballot and the turnout was very low, under 30 percent).
This year the turnout appears to have been around 42 percent, marginally lower than the typical contested primary years.