The Turnout That Wasn’t

Interesting:

Despite widespread predictions of record turnout in this year’s presidential election, roughly the same portion of eligible voters cast ballots in 2008 as in 2004.

Between 60.7 percent and 61.7 percent of the 208.3 million eligible voters cast ballots this year, compared with 60.6 percent of those eligible in 2004, according to a voting analysis by American University political scientist Curtis Gans, an authority on voter turnout.

He estimated that between 126.5 million and 128.5 million eligible voters cast ballots this year, versus 122.3 million four years ago. Gans said the gross number of ballots cast in 2008 was the highest ever, even though the percentage was not substantially different from 2004, because there were about 6.5 million more people registered to vote this time around…

…In 2004, turnout was 6 percentage points higher than in 2000. But Gans said he believed it did not spike more this year because fewer Republicans went to the polls. While it may be premature to draw conclusions, Gans said, it appeared that Republican voting declined 1.3 points, to 28.7 percent of the electorate, while Democratic turnout rose from 28.7 percent to 31.3 percent of the electorate.

The Democratic increase struck some analysts as modest, considering the party’s immense get-out-the-vote operation, strong anti-Bush sentiment and Obama’s popularity.

“It sort of calls into question some of the vaunted ground game discussion, the whole turnout machine,” said a Democratic strategist who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing Obama’s campaign. “The GOTV effort was redoubled in 2008 compared to 2004, but it did not seem to make that big of a difference.”

Not quite the sweeping victory for liberalism our leftwing friends are claiming. Now the stories about Obama’s paid “volunteers” (who seem to have went at least temporarily unpaid) massing in droves to back his candidacy take on the look of, well, nonsense. Here are some States which had a decrease:

Ohio: 5,379,765 in 2008, 5,722,443 in 2004, 6% decrease.
Indiana: 2,286,760 in 2008, 2,468,002 in 2004, 7% decrease.
Alaska: 223,258 in 2008, 312,598 in 2004, 29% decrease.

The Alaska number is especially amazing given the hotly contested Senate seat plus having the Alaska governor on the ballot. For all the hoopla and hype and election day stories of massive turnout, its clear that it wasn’t like that at all - so why were we getting stories saying such was happening when it wasn’t? Some States (Florida, eg) had a big increase in turnout, but there are not enough actual turnout increases in battleground States to support the election day meme of high turnout. We were also advised that turnout might be as high as 150 million, about 30 million more than actually showed up - where did the high estimate come from?

What shapes up initially is a lack of enthusiasm for John McCain on the part of rank and file GOPers which could not be made up by merely having Palin on the ticket (and for all the lefty attacks on her, the rank and file GOP holds a very high opinion on her) - as in 2006, not so much a resounding endorsement of liberalism but a rejection of the GOP as its been over the past few years. A better GOP should be able to get those voters back to the polls and put a swift end to the Era of The One.

UPDATE: Haven’t been able to secure the complete vote for Illinois, but it appears that turnout in The One’s State only increased about 1% over 2004. Strange, huh? It was up a bit more than 2% in Arizona…which is still a small increase, all things considered, but beats Barry’s.

Tags: Voter Issues, voter turnout

22 comments November 9th, 2008

2008 Turnout Fizzle

We were told it was just stupendous how many people were turning out to vote…

A new report from American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate concludes that voter turnout in Tuesday’s election was the same in percentage terms as it was four years ago — or at most has risen by less than 1 percent.

The report released Thursday estimates that between 126.5 and 128.5 million Americans cast ballots in the presidential election earlier this week. Those figures represent 60.7 percent or, at most, 61.7 percent of those eligible to vote in the country.

“A downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower than predicted turnout,” the report said. (emphasis added)

An unpopular President, an unpopular war, a skidding economy and a moderate GOP standard-bearer…there was only so much Palin could do for the ticket, and we will find a way to get those GOPers back to the polls, my dear Democrats…

Tags: voter turnout

18 comments November 7th, 2008

Record Primary Turnout: What Does it Mean?

Not much, as David Freddoso points out over at NRO’s The Corner:

In the open election of 1988, 23 million Democrats voted in primaries, as did 12 million Republicans. Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Nearly twice as many Democrats voted. That was a precursor to President Michael Dukakis’s election.

In 1980, Democrats actually had an incumbent president, who was challenged by Ted Kennedy. Republicans, meanwhile, had a competitive primary between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Democrats cast 16.1 million votes in their primaries that year, compared to just (corrected) 12.7 million for Republicans. We all know what happened in Jimmy Carter’s second term, don’t we?

The only times Republicans have outnumbered Democrats in primaries in the last 35 years were 2000 and 1996 — both years when Republicans were sick of being out of power. Even in those years, Republican turnout was only slightly higher than Democratic turnout.

That’s where the Democrats are now — they are sick of being out of power. Plus, they’ll probably still be choosing their nominee in July, so expect their advantage to climb. Their turnout is higher, just as it always has been, it shouldn’t come as any surprise.

I thought there was something funny in all that talk of record turnout, especially as I saw several contests where, yes, Democrat turnout was higher than ever, but so was GOP turnout (even if still a lower number than the Democrats’). Certainly, Democrats are far more engaged right now and the political stars are aligned right for them to have a very good shot at winning in November - but any Democrat who extrapolates from primary turnout to November victory is engaging in wishful thinking. There has to be an actual contest - the battle has to be joined, and the votes cast. For more information on this sort of necessity, you might ask a player for the New England Patriots.

Tags: Primaries, voter turnout

21 comments February 12th, 2008