Democrats Boast Massive Voter Registration Advantage
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Democrats, Republicans
It’s apparently +2,344,000 in 28 “purple” states, but that advantage is only true if all of those voters actually go to the polls and cast a ballot of Obama/Biden.
Still, the gap is impressive and speaks to how much the Dems want to win this thing.
Since the last federal election in 2006, volunteers like Graham combined with the enthusiasm generated by the Obama-Clinton struggle to add more than 2 million Democrats to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states.The Democrats hope their voter registration efforts can boost Obama to victory in competitive states like Pennsylvania, Nevada and Florida and perhaps even give him a shot at winning traditional Republican states like Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Both Obama and his Republican rival, John McCain, are fighting for independent swing voters, and many of the new Democrats had been unaffiliated voters.
The number of unaffiliated voters dropped by nearly 900,000 since 2006. Many joined the Democratic Party to take part in the primaries and caucuses, and now they will now be targeted by an aggressive get-out-the-vote campaign.
On a semi-related note I watched “Recount” last night, a great film by HBO which tells the inside story of the aftermath of the 2000 election and how everything went so sideways for the Dems. Definitely worth a look.
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Democrats, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
This is really encouraging news, and I hope there will be a similar drive to help ensure that these people get to the polls.
One important place to make an effort is on college campuses, where candidate enthusiasm runs high but voter turnout is historically pretty low. This election really could be decided by the “youth” vote if they actually turn out this time.
September 7th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
It’s still an advantage, even if those newly-registered voters only go to the polls in the same percentages as the rest of the registered voting population. The question is whether they do, and whether the election is close enough that they make a difference to the final results.
My guess: they turn out at a somewhat lower rate than the existing registered voters. But still enough to make a difference in a couple of very close states. Whether those states mean a different result overall — no idea.
September 7th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
It’s still an advantage, even if those newly-registered voters only go to the polls in the same percentages as the rest of the registered voting population.
They won’t, especially if most of them come out of the ACORN vote-mills Obama shelled out $800K for. Prime states to watch will be Ohio, Michigan, Virginia, and Colordao.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Only in the minds of the right wing media is ACORN an absolutely unmitigated source of evil. They do need to clean up a lot of stuff. They have problems that derive largely from not having the bucks for tight oversight of all operations but are nothing like what Tully thinks they are if his sources have been places like Michelle Malkin or the National Review.
September 8th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
And notice the t-shirt the volunteer is wearing. Not ACORN.