Medina County Off-Year Voting Statistics

According to the Medina County Board of Elections website 37,414 voters voted in the 2007 general election. The BOE also shows the county as having 124,107 voters. Based on those two figures, the turnout was 30.1%. The figure for the total number of voters is misleading, however.

There are 23,040 registered voters in Medina County who didn't vote in either the 2004 or 2006 general elections. There are also 74,247 who voted in either of those two elections. Assuming that voters who have missed voting in both a presidential and gubernatorial elections aren't going to vote in an off-year election, it makes sense to take them out of the equation when figuring the turn-out for 2007.

If you remove the 23,040 "missing" voters from the equation, you get a voter universe of 101,067. Using that figure, the turn-out increases to 37.1%. If you calculate the turn-out based on the voters who actually voted in either the 2004 or 2006 general elections, the turn-out increases to 50.3%.

What's interesting about off-year elections is that both political parties aren't seeing a very large percentage of their voters voting in them, if 2005 is any guide. In 2004 Democratic voters in Medina County numbered 16,195 while Republican voters numbered 16,416. In 2006 Democratic voters numbered 15,207 and Republican voters numbered 15,555.

In 2005, however, the turn-out for Democratic voters dropped to 4019 and the turn-out for Republican voters dropped to 3258. If either or both political parties had turned out their voters anywhere close the 2004 or 2006 general elections, the results would probably have been dramatically different.