Did they? I haven't seen what percentage of them voted in either 2016 or 2018. The 87% is against 2016 participation, not their entire base. Maybe 2016 was particularly low because no one though anyone had a chance against HRC?
I pretty much consider a presidential election to be the base. You might have a few party registereds that vote in other elections but not the presidential, but it's usually small, 2% give or take. The rest are dead, moved, or don't care to vote, such as teens registering in high school.
The 12th district had a higher vote total in '16 than '12. There was some swing between '12 and '16 about 4500 votes. Factoring out those true Indies, the base there looks to be about 125K max.
Since this is a mid-term, voting will be less. In the special they had about 30K more votes for the Dem candidate than in '14. I'm not sure how they are going to improve on that in just 3 months.
Meanwhile the GOP only voted 40%. They can vote upwards of 75% in the mid-terms.
It doesn't give Dems much hope this district. They have been doing this in most of the specials, either narrowly winning or losing, but with a high turnout.
Where are they going to glean the extra votes to win in the general? What they will have to do is depress GOP turnout.
