The back-and-forth over Tuesday's closed GOP primary — and the ultimate voter turnout — just keeps on keeping on.

Today, Idaho GOP rules committee chairman Ronald M. Nate weighed in with a statistical analysis on the 2008, 2010 and 2012 primaries, and suggested the turnout reveals a sharp decline in Democratic voters.

State political party chairpersons are supposed to be optimists, and Larry Grant serviceably played the role Tuesday.

Holding court with KBOI 670’s Nate Shelman and me on Election Night, the state Democratic Party head predicted state Sen. Nicole LeFavour could raise $1 million in her run against 2nd Congressional District Rep. Mike Simpson, suggested 1st District Rep. Raul Labrador is vulnerable this fall, and said his party could pick up four to eight legislative seats.

Considering the results that unfolded later Tuesday night, Grant’s on-air goals seem awfully lofty.

I had an interesting Twitter conversation on Election Night. A follower asked whether newspaper endorsements are effective, how we make our decisions, and how Statesman-endorsed candidates fared in Tuesday’s elections.

I’ll first answer the numbers question. Our editorial board endorsed 35 candidates for Congress and county offices and legislative seats in Ada and Canyon counties. Twenty-three of these candidates won, a 65.7 percent rate.

Voter turnout in Tuesday's Idaho primaries may have hit a record low — due largely to new rules that restricted the GOP primary to registered Republicans only.

But that didn't stop the GOP from claiming success on the voter turnout front — although the party had to cherry-pick numbers to get there.

On Tuesday, some 144,500 votes were cast in Idaho's GOP congressional races. And, as the GOP correctly notes in a news release, that is a marked increase from 2008, when 126,573 votes were cast in the congressional races.

Idaho’s first experiment in closed primaries lacked for participation (more on that later). But Tuesday’s election hardly lacked for big wins and epic fails.

1:17 a.m.: Last post of the night. The final Canyon County legislative results, and some quick reactions.

Given Robert Schaefter's 28 years of winning elections in Canyon County, Todd Lakey's runaway win in the District 12 Senate match is a surprise. I could have seen him winning, but not this easily.

Perhaps an even bigger surprise was Rep. Christy Perry, R-Nampa, running in a largely redrawn district and drawing some resistance from members of GOP House leadership. She won with a narrow majority, no small feat in a four-way race.

Here's a preview of our Wednesday editorial on the primary election — the new and not-improved version.

Call it human nature, but you never know what you had until it’s gone.

So today, we mourn something that formally vanished from the Idaho political landscape Tuesday — for this year, and perhaps for good. A primary election that actually worked for voters.

In its place is a “closed” party primary that brushes aside a basic tenet of representative government: the idea that people should be encouraged to vote, not dissuaded and disenfranchised.

Conservation Voters for Idaho today announced four endorsements in Boise-area legislative races — and backed two candidates with contested primaries Tuesday.

The group's choices were:

• Betty Richardson, Democrat, for District 15 Senate.

• Richard Keller, Democrat, for District 15 House Seat A. Keller faces John Hart in Tuesday's primary.

• Steve Berch, Democrat, for District 15 House Seat B.

• Hy Kloc, Democrat, for District 16 House Seat B. Kloc faces Davide "Pappy" Honey in Tuesday's primary.

Michael Greenway, a Boise State University student challenging Rep. Reed DeMordaunt in Tuesday's GOP primary, criticized the incumbent's support of the Students Come First K-12 overhaul.

Wrote Greenway, in a rebuttal to our Tuesday endorsement, "DeMourdaunt voted for a bill that literally replaced teachers with computers in the classroom. This does not help our education system, it hurts our education system. We as a community must come together and recognize the importance of teachers."

With the primary election a day away, here's a recap of our May 15 primary endorsements — with links to the full editorials:

April 27: Congress.
• First Congressional District, GOP: Raul Labrador.
• First Congressional District, Democrat: Jimmy Farris.
• Second Congressional District, GOP: Mike Simpson.
• Second Congressional District, Democrat: Nicole LeFavour.

May 1: Canyon County.
• Commissioner, District 1, GOP: Steve Rule.
• Commissioner, District 3, GOP: Craig Hanson.