Rainy-day Turnout Didn't Stop Scott or Bondi, but it Doused Greene

Even with a dismal 20.9 percent voter turnout, Republicans Rick Scott and Pam Bondi amassed enough votes to oust better-known, established party candidates Bill McCollum and Jeff Kottkamp.

Before the polls closed Tuesday, amateur oddsmakers determined that Scott needed a strong turnout -- upwards of 1.7 million votes cast -- to beat McCollum. The awaited deluge never came (perhaps dampened by poor weather), but Scott had banked enough early and absentee ballots to spoil a McCollum comeback. Scott led the evening's vote tally from wire to wire, even though the vote total barely topped 1.2 million.

Early on, Kottkamp's camp figured that the low turnout could work to their advantage, since the lieutenant governor enjoyed better name recognition and was popular among social conservatives who tend to vote under any circumstances. But Bondi caught fire early and held on.

Poor as the GOP numbers may have been, the Division of Elections statistics suggested that Democratic turnout was absolutely awful. That had to hurt Jeff Greene's challenge to U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek in the party's U.S. Senate primary. The few Dems who bothered to cast ballots did what Democrats around the country have done this year: They went for the devil they knew vs. the devil they didn't.

Just 909,307 Democrats voted in the Senate primary.