The conventional wisdom in politics is that negative advertising, while effective at depressing the attacked candidate's level of support, hurts election turnout overall by giving voters more reason to stay home. Yet, one of the most negative high-profile races in recent memory with Sarasota County also had the highest turnout for any race conducted in Sarasota County during the Aug. 26 primary.

The contest to win the open Florida House of Representatives seat for District 74 was effectively decided in the election when Julio Gonzalez took 57.03 percent of the vote in the Republican primary over opponent Richard DeNapoli. The more than 14,000 voters who cast ballots represented a turnout of 28.37 percent, a fact discussed at SRQ Media Group's What There Votes Are event analyzing the race. 

"Even though the race I was in was insanely negative, it seems the turnout was behind us," marveled DeNapoli after the event. "That was something I didn't realize before I got here."

Of course, the contest was only open to Republican voters, and the South Sarasota County race was in the most Republican-friendly part of the county. In the vast majority of precincts south of Clark Road, the majority of primary voters were registered with the GOP. Republicans had a countywide turnout of 26.45 percent, compared to Democrats' 24.72 percent and voters of other parties' turnout of 21.2 percent.

A group that failed to yield high turnout, though, was younger voters. The election analysis shoed that just 3.31 percent of voters in their 20s voted in the primary, compared to 35.22 percent in their 30s. Indeed, voters over the age of 90 who participated outnumbered voters under the age of 30, 1830 votes to 1035 votes respectively. That even though registered voters under the age of 30 outnumber voters older than 90 by 30,453 to 7,293.

Of course, turnout in primary elections is historically much lower than in general elections. In 2010, the last year with a gubernatorial contest on the ballot in Florida, turnout for the primary was 24.28 in Sarasota County but jumped to 56.1 percent for the general election.