LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Democrats are hoping the record turnout in the state's presidential primary portends well for their efforts to defeat President Donald Trump in November.

Nearly 1.6 million people cast ballots on the Democratic side Tuesday. That was almost 380,000 more than four years ago, a 31% increase.

Overall turnout — which was roughly 30% of the voting-age population — was down 10% from 2016, but there was no competitive Republican contest this time unlike then.

State Democratic Party Chairwoman Lavora Barnes on Wednesday called it a “turnout explosion” and said it showed that Democratic voters want to hold Trump “accountable" for “broken promise after promise" after he flipped Michigan to his corner — the first GOP nominee to have done that in 28 years.

“With the statewide, grassroots organization we’ve built, I know we’re ready to turn every corner of Michigan blue this November,” she said.

Michigan has an open primary system. People could vote in either race without having to register as a Republican or Democrat.

Democratic consultant Mark Grebner attributed the high Democratic turnout in part to Republicans and independents voting in the Democratic race since Trump had no serious challenge in the low-profile GOP contest. Former Vice President Joe Biden took all 83 counties, topping Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by more than 16 percentage points.

But Grebner said more Democratic voters participated than last time because “everybody is so berserk about Trump. Turnout in this election is consistent with that.”

Turnout could have been even greater, he said, considering Biden — who turned around his fortunes in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday — had little of a Michigan operation until he campaigned here on the eve of the election.

Grebner, a voter-data expert, projected a record 6 million people will vote in the fall, at least 1 million more than is typical. If that happened, he said, it generally would be an advantage for the Democratic nominee.

“It's not that a larger turnout guarantees a Democratic win. But as you add people to the electorate, the people you add are more Democratic," he said. “You're adding people who are slightly more liberal than the core voter. ... The Republicans can still win in that environment. But they have to have a pretty good candidate and it has to be a pretty Republican year.”

Tony Zammit, a spokesman for the state GOP, said it was “very enthusiastic” about the 682,000 votes cast in the Republican primary.

“Without a real challenger, President Trump set a record for votes as an incumbent without spending the massive amount of money on advertising that the Democrats did,” he said.

The primary was Michigan's first major election since the 2018 passage of a ballot initiative that expanded voting rights by letting people cast an absentee ballot for any reason and register to vote in the two weeks before an election, including on Election Day.

Nearly 877,000 people voted absentee, a 90% increase. More than 13,000 people registered to vote on Tuesday, three-quarters of them ages 18 to 29, according to the Department of State.

Spokesman Jake Rollow said the election by and large “went smoothly," particularly in jurisdictions that allocated resources to the primary as if it were a general election. There were long lines to register in college areas such as East Lansing, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Kent County's Allendale Township along with Dearborn.

Rollow said about half of the people who the same-day registration option showed up after 4:30 p.m.

“That is a very difficult situation for any clerk's office to just an enormous rush at any one time,” he said.

Rollow said the state will work to do more to educate potential registrants that they can do so earlier “so that we can smooth out that demand on service.” The state also plans to explore ways to help clerks have more people to register voters, ensure they have enough technology to check the qualified voter file and ease their ability to process absentee ballots.

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