Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said he predicts voter turnout will be between 45% to 50% of registered voters for the general election in November, which would total around 1.64 million to 1.84 million people voting in the state.
Merrill also predicted that around 1 million of these people could vote Republican.
“We’ve been projecting where we will be based on previous performance, based on the number of registered voters we have now, based on participation patterns in [similar elections] we’ve had in the past,” Merrill said on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5 on Friday.
These predictions, if true, would not break the record for the percentage of registered voters but will for raw numbers, according to Merrill.
Only 23.4% of registered voters voted in the primary elections in Alabama in May. The number was even lower for the runoff primary elections in June, totaling only 12.8%.
In the primary, there were 851,684 ballots cast in total, 78% of which were Republican.
According to reports, Merrill predicts the turnout to be between 28% to 32%.
Merrill claimed to register 2,149,832 new voters in Alabama since 2015, totaling 3,679,375 registered voters in the state.
Merrill said there are very few competitive races around the country.
“You haven’t seen a whole lot of energy with the candidates, but I think it’s because there hasn’t been that level of enthusiasm,” Merrill told 1819 News on Monday.
He also said he feels good about the Republican party going into the general elections in November.
“We have typically seen in the history of the Republic whenever a president of one party is in power, and the body is controlled by that group that typically what occurs in the midterm election is a change of 28 seats. If that trend continues … you’ll see a Republican majority of between 22 and 23 seats in the House of Representatives.”
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