Out of the roughly 1.2 million registered Democrats and Republicans across Connecticut as of late March, about 17,800, or 1.4%, turned out last week to participate in the state’s first ever early voting period, according to unofficial data from the secretary of the state’s office.
Voters for the Democratic primary had a slightly higher turnout among early voters than Republicans, 1.56% and 1.12%, respectively.
“Pretty low turnout in general, but I thought it was a resounding success,” said Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas in a press conference earlier today.
Voters had four days to head to the polls early, from last Tuesday through Saturday, excluding Friday. Tuesday had the highest turnout, with 5,883 people hitting the polls, compared to a low of 3,536 Thursday.
"I actually just think most people don't know there's an election," said Thomas. "It's not an election that people have top of mind because it's in a different time of year."
Chester had the highest total turnout at 9.3%, with 155 people voting out of the 1,670 active registered Democratic and Republican voters as of October 2023, followed by Cornwall (7.3%) and Salisbury (6.9%).
The state’s largest cities had a much lower turnout. Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford and Waterbury all had a turnout rate less than 1%, with none of them turning out more than 400 voters during the early voting period.
And the differences in turnout varied. Most towns had a higher turnout for the Democratic primary than for the Republican primary, albeit most were by no more than two percentage points. Only three towns had a turnout difference between parties of more than four percentage points. Chester, which had the highest total turnout, had a party turnout difference of 6.9 percentage points, which was driven largely by Democratic turnout — 11.5% turnout compared to 4.6% turnout for the Republican primary. Warren and Sharon followed with a turnout difference of over four percentage points.