Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has pulled off a maneuver reminiscent of something found in a Saul Alinsky playbook. Ocasio-Cortez used an often ignored statistic to her advantage: fewer voters turn our for primaries than actual elections. In fact, barely 13% of registered democrats showed up for the Ocasi-Cortez primary. This enabled a small small but fervent band of her followers to propel her to victory over her more more moderate democratic opponent.
The 14th congressional district in New York is heavily skewed democrat. Fanatically democrat. It is highly unlikely that a republican will ever win this district. So what’s the probable outcome? Even though it is likely that the majority of people in this district would not have supported Ocasio-Cortez, they now have no choice: It’s either Ocasio-Cortez or a republican. That’s a no-brainer for these voters.
I imagine no one thought that an incumbant would lose, and so they stayed home rather than vote. And I’m sure Ocasio-Cortez’ campaign team knew this, and realized that they could win the primary (and thus the election for this district) by mobilizing a much smaller force than would have been necessary under normal circumstances. Thus, a mere 7% share of the population of the district was able to send their desired candidate to congress.
See why it’s so important to vote, even in the primaries?