The conventional wisdom holds that primary turnout in California is generally weak unless there is a particularly contested election of note or a high-profile, high-stakes ballot measure. This June 7, with the presidential nominations largely determined for both parties, most observers have low expectations.

But the National University System Institute for Policy Research thinks we’re in for a surprise. The San Diego university recently released a policy brief that predicts at least half of San Diego County residents will vote — up at least 13 percent from the June 2012 primary. 

This is based on a huge surge in voter registration in the county — a development that has also been seen statewide, with similar implications.

“California is experiencing historic growth in new voter registrations; more than 850,000 voters have registered between January 1st and March 31st of this year. This registration figure is twice the total from January 1st to March 31st in 2012. As noted by elections analyst Paul Mitchell in Capitol Weekly, the last time the state voter rolls grew in the 18 months prior to a presidential primary election was in 1980,” the National University report said.

“San Diego County is no exception – using registration reports from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters, we found countywide registration increased a net 50,977 voters from January 5th to April 30th. Most of the net change in partisan registration was among Democratic voters, further increasing the small registration lead the Democratic Party has over the GOP in San Diego County.”

This influx of voters is “younger, more diverse and more Democratic-leaning,” the policy brief noted.

“Demographically, they largely fit the profile of Bernie Sanders supporters,” Vince Vasquez, senior policy analyst at National University System Institute for Policy Research, told KPBS. “How many will vote down ticket, and what are the campaigns doing to appeal to these new voters? We’ll find out on election night.”

Is social media leading to more young liberals voting?

The report doesn’t speculate on why voting might be higher than normal. But the Obama campaign’s successful “microtargeting” of voters in 2012 is seen as having created new ways to reach and lobby younger voters. In the last month before the 2012 election, the Obama campaign unveiled a new tactic that it credited with leading to a surge in youth voting. Time magazine’s election post-mortem had details:

Half the campaign’s targeted swing-state voters under age 29 had no listed phone number. They lived in the cellular shadows, effectively immune to traditional get-out-the-vote efforts. … But the Obama team had a solution in place: a Facebook application that will transform the way campaigns are conducted in the future. …. “I think this will wind up being the most groundbreaking piece of technology developed for this campaign,” says Teddy Goff, the Obama campaign’s digital director.

That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the app gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly 85% of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded friend lists. What’s more, Facebook offered an ideal way to reach them. … 

The campaign called this effort targeted sharing. And in those final weeks of the campaign, the team blitzed the supporters who had signed up for the app with requests to share specific online content with specific friends simply by clicking a button. More than 600,000 supporters followed through with more than 5 million contacts, asking their friends to register to vote, give money, vote or look at a video designed to change their mind.

This social media-access access often appears to lead to increasingly “pure” liberal views and is reflected in Sanders’ huge lead over Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton among voters under 30.

Trump seen as spurring Hispanics to register

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported Thursday that another candidate besides Sanders may be bringing out California voters: Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is spurring a record number of citizenship applications and increases in voter registration among Latinos upset by the candidate’s rhetoric and fearful of his plans to crack down on immigration. …. 

In California, the number of Hispanics registering to vote doubled in the first three months of this year compared with the same period in 2012, according to state data.

“The Tuesday special election in San Diego, triggered by the resignation of Democratic Mayor Bob Filner, caps a tumultuous stretch in the seaside defense-contracting-and-tourism hub that was once a stronghold of California Republicanism. Rocked in the past few years by a public-pensions meltdown that drove one mayor from office and again last year by Filner’s lurid sexual harassment scandal, San Diego politics is now buffeted by a different kind of force: overwhelming outside spending.

“At a moment in politics when Democrats are usually the ones complaining about heavy-handed electioneering from powerfully funded groups on the right, the race in San Diego is a vivid counterpoint — an illustration of the shock-and-awe impact national liberal groups can have when they engage outside federal elections.

“By the end of January, Washington-based labor unions had donated more than $1.2 million to outside groups supporting Democrat David Alvarez, a 33-year-old freshman city councilman who would be San Diego’s first Hispanic mayor. The $1.2 million figure matches the entire independent expenditure budget for GOP outside groups in the race … .”

“Faulconer has far outdistanced Alvarez in fundraising for his campaign account, taking in nearly $2.2 million to the Democrat’s $734,000. But union-backed independent expenditure groups have spent more than both those figures combined: the most imposing organization, the AFL-CIO and AFSCME-backed Working Families for a Better San Diego, has raised about $3.6 million to boost Alvarez.”

Among young, GOP woes go far beyond being outspent

So why hasn’t the national Republican Party jumped in to try to give the GOP its only big-city mayor? Because it might do more harm than good.

“In the face of heavy spending from the labor-backed Democratic coalition, there has been minimal national conservative engagement in the race. In part, that’s a matter of necessity: the national GOP brand could be toxic for Faulconer in a diverse, increasingly liberal-leaning city. A Republican National Committee official said that there’s field staff on the ground for the 2014 cycle, but there’s not a comparable financial investment from GOP-oriented groups. …

“To veterans of San Diego politics, the city’s leftward drift is a striking case study in what heavy-duty partisan investment can do in lower-profile elections — and a testament to the GOP’s desperate straits with the young people, minority voters and cultural liberals who are heavily represented in big cities.”

That last point can’t be made enough. It reminds me of the 2004 debate between Thomas Frank and George Will, but in reverse.

That was the year Frank’s book “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” came out. Its premise was that social conservatives were so manipulated by hot-button Republican campaign tactics that they voted against their own economic interests.

On TV and in print, Will responded by questioning the notion that Democrats would bring more prosperity to the average Kansan than Republicans. But he also made the point that in a post-Cold War era, the stakes in voting were much less grave, and that people who were doing OK economically might not vote their pocketbooks:

“Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other — some would say higher — concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the content of popular culture, the agendas of public education and the prevalence of abortion.

“So, what’s the matter with Kansas? Not much, other than it is has not measured up — down, actually — to the left’s hope for a more materialistic politics.”

The Dems who don’t vote their pocketbooks

Now, a decade later, we have the opposite phenomenon in California. An overwhelming case can be made that Democratic hegemony has been bad for the average Californian since 1999, and that poverty and unemployment would be reduced if there wasn’t such Dem opposition to helping the private sector prosper. But among the majority of Democratic voters who have jobs, their relative personal success inoculates them from this GOP argument. And GOPers have no counter to undo the perceptions about their party, especially among the young.

To paraphrase Will:

Hence many people, emancipated from material concerns, can pour political passions into other — some would say higher — concerns. These include the condition of the culture, as measured by such indexes as the expansion of gay rights, the availability of contraception and abortion, and the concerns of environmentalists.

The younger cohort of such people may be lost to Republicans forever, even if they register independent — unless the GOP figures out a new tune, and soon.

As for San Diego, I still think Faulconer squeaks through to victory in the special election despite the influx of outside union cash. But when he’s up for re-election in 2016 after completing what’s left of Filner’s term, watch out. The demographics of general elections don’t bode well for Republicans in San Diego — and just about everywhere else in California.