MONTGOMERY&8212;Because the newspapers I write for have different publication dates…some of them will be printed before the election, some afterwards…I am in a hopeless position as I write this column.

I am writing it before the election, some of you are reading it after the election.

You know who won…I haven&8217;t the foggiest notion.

Which is a round-about way of saying I cannot make any reference to the election…rather, this column will be what we call a &8220;filler&8221; in my trade.

I will make one prediction about the primary elections:

The voter turnout in the party primaries will be dwarfed by the voter turnout in November.

Because we are now a true two-party state in statewide elections many Alabamians now wait for what they call the &8220;real election&8221; in November to cast their vote.

For proof of this you need only to look back to 2002.

There were almost 500,000 more votes cast in the November, 2002 general election than were cast in the Democrat and Republican primaries in June of that year.

And if the vote is as light in the primaries as I am predicting, it could have an impact on some of the races.

Bob Ingram has covered Alabama politics for more than 50 years