Posted on 11/06/2008 6:25:04 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON (CNN) – 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.
Click here to read the entire report.
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. Compared to 2004, Republican turnout declined by 1.3 percentage points to 28.7 percent, while Democratic turnout increased by 2.6 points from 28.7 percent in 2004 to 31.3 percent in 2008.
“Many people were fooled (including this student of politics although less so than many others) by this year’s increase in registration (more than 10 million added to the rolls), citizens’ willingness to stand for hours even in inclement weather to vote early, the likely rise in youth and African American voting, and the extensive grassroots organizing network of the Obama campaign into believing that turnout would be substantially higher than in 2004,” Curtis Gans, the center’s director, said in the report. “But we failed to realize that the registration increase was driven by Democratic and independent registration and that the long lines at the polls were mostly populated by Democrats.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com ...
Very few New Voters but lots of people that voted for Bush in 2004 decided to vote for Obama in 2008.
More votes cast in '08 presidential race than '04 (GOP turnout way down from 2004)
LS was very optimistic on election day because in Ohio, they were turning out their voters from 2004. Much to his later dismay, he found out many were going for 0.
YOuth vote was only slightly higher too.
The media was again pumping up a false notion.
Shocking!!
There was only a 3% difference in party affiliation on election day?
I can understand Ohio swinging one or two percent from 2004 to 2008 but Indiana swinging 20 points from 2004 to 2008 is just crazy.
I guess all of Sarah and John's campaigning in the Hoosier State was not enough. Or maybe they could have just done one more rally in Pennsylvania.
They took IN for granted for a long time figuring if they lost IN, they’d lose big in any event. They were right.
And it looks like the vote total in OHIO in 2008 will be lower than the vote total in 2004.
The base did turn out. It was the defection of RINOs and independents who voted for Bush twice. I know of several people in my town that voted for Bush twice, but flipped to Obama. They were concerned about the economy and decided it was time to try something new.
When Palin was having rallies in Indy, I knew the ticket was in very bad shape.
The Bush impact on the GOP in 2006 & 2008 will prove to be like the Carter impact on the Democrats in 1980-1984.
This year I voted absentee and at least six friends and family members did the same. These are all people who normally vote on Election Day.
Many I talked with voted absentee because they saw the lines on television and opted to avoid the long wait. I suspect the percentage of absentee is much higher this year in all states. Do you think all the states have tabulated their absentee by now? I would guess yes. I bet this happened in every county and in every state. People wanted to make sure they didn’t wait in lines and they wanted to make sure they voted. My town clerks office said they have never had this many absentee ballots ever. I am in Massachusetts. What do you guys think? I think the numbers might be artificially low because states haven’t counted all their absentee ballots yet. Does anyone know the process of counting absentee ballots?
However, states like California and Virginia take days to count their ballots. I think California has about 2 1/2 million absentee ballots to count.
Even if you do add them, the turnout rate is the same as 2004.
I do not,...I assume it varies by state.,
I don't think California has counted them yet.
As tight as the money is ...they might find a reason not to spend the money to count them.
39% don’t give a sh!^.
So I guess nominating a RINO was pretty stupid after all. We tried Dole, we tried McCain...can we go back to conservatives now?
The economic problems that doomed Carter did carry over into Reagan’s first term. As a result, 1982 was a good year for the Dems. If the economy continues to spiral down, maybe we can be reassert our former strength in the suburbs. With the past two Dow performances, I hope my neighbors are enjoying the “change” that they voted for.
Carter's image was still being used regularly in attack ads during the 1988 campaign...
The economic problems that doomed Hoover did carry over into FDR’s first term. As a result, 1934, and 1936 were catastrophic years for the GOP. If the economy continues to spiral down, the Sheeple may respond ever more positively to the continued expansion of government just as they did in the 1930's. Let's not kid ourselves about the peril the Republican Party is in at present.
“time to try something new”.
We have some real mental giants in this country!
It turns out we lost more Rs this time around. However, we still aren't sure of the final numbers, nor is anyone else. We just finished counting the provisional ballots. I'll know better how many Rs crossed over by week's end. At any rate, it's too many.
I’ve been told absentee ballots aren’t counted unless the race is close enough that they would make a difference.
Ohio:
2008: Obama 2,662,951 votes (51.12%), McCain 2,464,104 votes (47.30%)
2004: President Bush 2,859,768 votes (50.81%), Kerry 2,741,167 votes (48.71%)
Montgomy county Ohio:
2008: Obama 126,786 votes (52.2%), McCain 112,542 votes (46.4%), others 3,333 (1.4%)
2004: Kerry 142,997 votes (50.6%), President Bush 138, 371 votes (49%).
not sure how representative message boards like this are, but large numbers on here openly said they were not going to vote this year.
On a local level they are. There are many undecided legislative races.
If 10% of the Republican base decided not to vote that is millions of voters nation wide and hundred of thousands of Republican voters in states like Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
I heard that too. Something different happened this year. For weeks we saw long lines and waits of 2-3 hours at voting places. When I went to submit my absentee ballot, there were crates, and crates, and crates of unopened absentee ballots. I think 30% of people in Massachusetts could have voted this way. At least in my small work, friend, family circle 60% voted absentee when they normally vote on Election Day. I just hope our Governor, Deval Patrick, Obama’s friend, counted all these votes. I just have a gut feeling. I haven’t seen any offical numbers released yet. I checked the website and nothing is listed.
It could certainly be the Coleman, Chambliss and Gordon Smith senate seats...
No doubt. And it could be Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina.
I think the PUMA movement was an Obama Front.
We haven't finished counting the ballots yet. As of yesterday, there were 10,000 ballots untabulated in my county alone, and I doubt this story has the results of the previous 50,000 that we just counted last night.
How about, for a change, we actually have DATA before we "call" something?
We are not finished counting ballots. As of Wednesday night, 60,000 ballots in my county alone remained to be counted. Multiply that statewide. I don't know if other states are all "in," but OH isn't. How about we wait until we actually have the numbers.
FR is starting to look like CBS with its "early calls."
But 10% didn’t deiced not to vote. According to this article. 30% of Republicans turned out in 2004 and 28.7% turned out this year. Given that Bush was a popular incumbent with a good economy in 2004 and was leading in the polls and the favorite to win and McCain wasn’t an incumbent but was running to succeed a hugely unpopular incumbent in Bush with an awful economy and had to deal with the media spending the final six weeks of the campaign trumpeting polls that showed he had no chance at all to win(some of which we now know were completely bogus and artifically designed to pump up Obama and demoralize Republicans), is a decline in GOP turnout from 30% to 28.7% really all that of a surprise. Basically instead of 30 of every 100 Republicans turning out, 29 of every 100 did. 1% stayed home relative to 2004. I’d have figured it to be much worse a decrease. Given all that has happened since 2004, that’s a pretty good number to reach, all things considered.
I’d want to compare GOP turnout this year to what it was in 2000, the last time we had a non-incumbent running, or even to 1996 or 1992, those are much better comparisons to this year’s election than 2004.
actually, I just looked at the report and it answers my question.
GOP turnout this year was actually 2.7 pts HIGHER than it was when Bush ran in 2000, 7.7 pts higher than it was when Dole ran in 96, and 6.9 pts higher than when Bush 41 ran in 1992. It was even .4 pts higher than GOP turnout for Bush in 1988 and 1 pt higher than for Reagan in 1980. It was 2.2 pts higher than Ford in 76, 1.8 pts higher than Nixon in 68, and 4.5 pts higher than for Goldwater in 64.
That’s right, McCain actually got a higher % of GOP turnout than the most popular Republican and conservative in our lifetimes did when he first ran for Preisdent. He got a higher turnout than Mr Conservative Barry Goldwater did. He got a higher turnout as a non-incumbent running to succeed the most unpopular GOP President of our lifetime than an incumbent VP did running to succeed the most popular GOP President of our lifetime.
GOP turnout spiked higher than what McCain did this year 3 times in the past 50 years. In 2004, 1984, and 1972. What do those three elections have in common? Popular GOP incumbents runnig for reelection. It makes perfect sense they’d draw higher turnout than non-incumbents or first timers. And McCain actually got higher turnout than Bush did in 88 when he ran for Reagan’s 3rd term and was crushing Dukakis in the polls from the convention on.
In fact, the 28.7% of Republicans who turned out this year was the highest % ever for a non-incumbent Republican running for President. Again, higher than Goldwater in 64, Nixon in 68, Reagan in 80, Dole in 96, Bush in 2000. Higher than them all. And it was even higher than two incumbent President Ford in 76 and Bush in 92 got.
Even in the states the turnout #s for McCain are much better than previous no-incumbents. Take FL. 30.25% of the GOP turned out this year. In 2000, when Bush’s brother was the Governor and we absolutely needed the state to win, all of 26% of the GOP turned out. In 1992 and 1996 in was 22.5 and 21.4 respectively. Take OH. McCain got 28.84%. Bush got 28.19% in 2000. Bush 41 and Dole averaged around 23% in the 90s. Look at all the states that flipped NC, VA, NV, CO, IN. Turnout was a few pts higher for McCain than it was for Bush in 2000 and much higher than it was for Bush or Dole in the 90s. In all the red states in the South turnout was higher for McCain than it even for Bush in 2004.
The numbers simply don’t bear up. The idea the report tries to give that Palin sank GOP turnout simply isn’t true. Nor did McCain. Turnout simply dropped as it walways has whenever the party runs for a 3rd term. COmpared to the previous tries for a 3rd term in 1988 and 1976, the decline was actually far less. Much less. It dropped 1.3 pts this year from 2004. In 1988 when Bush ran for the 3rd term it dropped 4.6 pts from 1984, and in 1976 when Ford ran for the 3rd term it dropped 7.9 pts from 1972. If anything, McCain and Palin actually did a tremendous job in retaining turnout and holding it to such a high level given past historical trends. Given past history you’d expect it to be at around 23.7 not 28.7. McCain and Palin ran +5 against prior 3rd term turnout.
The facts ar epretty clear. McCain and Palin did a pretty good job of turning out the party. The fact is though, that there’s just a lot less of us than there used to be. A president with 75% disapproval, a midterm spanking in 2006, losing 12 Senate Seats and 50+ house seats in 2 years and a bad economy will do that to a party. For McCain and Palin to have stayed within 1.3 pts of what Bush and Cheney turned out in 2004 is amazing. I give Palin more credit for that than I give McCain. But they both did a great job. Turnout wasn’t why we lost. Even if we the same 30% of Republicans who turned out for BUsh in 2004 turned out on Tuesday we still would have lost. Maybe by 6 in the popular vote instead of 7. The same states would have flipped with the possible excpetion of IN and maybe FL. We still lose though. In NC, for example, GOP turnout actually increased and we lost a state we won by 12 pts.
This, however, is the truth and it has nothing to do with McCain or Palin:
“In the end, this election was driven by deep economic concerns and the prevailing emotional
climate,” Gans said. “While there probably has not been, since 1932, the confluence of factors that
underlay this election—90 percent of the American people seeing the nation on the wrong track, 75
percent disapproving of the president’s performance, more than 80 percent perceiving a recession
and feeling that things will get worse, and the reality of growing economic distress—on one level
this election was typical. When economic conditions go bad, the party in the White House gets
blamed and they lose.”
Pretty simple if you ask me.
Damn good work....thanks!
BTTT
Nice analysis. Thanks for going the extra mile to bring out things people simply are not considering.
no problem. looking at historical results for a party going for a 3rd term McCain was also pretty much on line if not better than expected
No party has ever gotten a higher % of the vote going for the 3rd term than they did for the 2nd.
In 2000 the dems dropped to 48.5% with Gore from the 49.2% Clinton got in 96. And that was with a Poular President with a 57-41 approval and the right track/wrongtrack being at 65-31 right track. Overall a loss of around 2% of the prior total. The fact that Gore lost that election when he had everything in his favor is hard to believe.
In 1988 The GOP dropped 5 pts to 54% with Bush from the 59% Reagan got in 84. Again Reagan had a high approval rating and there was a positive right track/wrong track. Overall a a loss of around 8% from the prior total.
In 1976 the GOP dropped 13 pts to 48% with Ford from the 61% Nixon got in 1972. After Watergate and NIxon’s resignation that’s perfectly understandable. Still, it was a loss of about 20% of their total from four years earlier.
In 1968 Humphrey dropped 18 pts to 43% from the 61% Johnson got in 1964. With opposition ot Vietnam, the rise in crime and urban decay, the collapse of the culture and implosion of the democratic party, not a surprise. Overall, a loss of close to 30% of the priot total.
In 1960 Nixon dropped 8 pts or so to 49.6% from the 57.4% Eisenhower had in 1956. An overall loss of 13.5%% from the 2nd term total.
In 1952 when Stevenson ran for Truman’s 3rd term the dems dropped 5 pts to 44.3% from the 49.6% Truman got. A loss of a little over 10% overall.
Even FDR running for a 3rd term in 1940 dropped 6 pts to 54.7% from 60.8%, a loss of around 10% overall.
This year, the GOP droped to 46.5% or so with McCain from the 50.8% that Bush got in 2004, a drop of 4.3 pts or around 8% of the prior total.
If you look at all the attempts for a 3rd term since the FDR era, the result this year was perfectly in line with them. McCain actually did much better thah some attempts for a 3rd term(Nixon in 1960, Humphrey in 1968, Ford in 1976). He was able to hold the same % of the vote that Bush 41 did in 1988, but Reagan’s 59% was a lot higher than than the 51% Bush got in 2004 so we had more to play with.
Considering that McCain faced the worst circumstances for a 3rd term attempt ever with te President at 75% disapproval, 75% saying we’re on the wrong track, 42% saying they or their family are worse off financially(compared to only 24% who said that in 2004), the Iraq War at 63% disapproval(compared with 45% in 2004), 93% saying the economy is not so good or poor(compared with 52% who said that in 2004), unemployment at its highest level in 15 years and rising 2% in the past year, being outspent by 300 mlilion dollars and outadvertised by over 50,000 spots, and a whole host of other things I could list, the result he ended up with was prtty good and about as good as could be expected given the historical trends.
He did just about as good if not better than anyone else who ran for a 3rd term, and under much, much worse circumstances.
thanks Ernest, jeltz25, and neverdem.
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