130M+ Voted Yesterday. Or Did They?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Voting
We’ve been told today that yesterday wasn’t just a win for Obama…it was a win for American democracy. People were finally energized to come out to the polls and both candidates broke records for the amount of votes they received.
However…where are the totals proving this?
First, the claims from Politico:
More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.
In 2004, 122.3 million voted in what was then the highest recorded turnout in the contest between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
However, right now with 97% reporting CNN has the vote total as such…
Obama: 63,493,372
McCain: 56,142,078
Total: 119,635,450
MSNBC shows virtually the same total with 97% reporting…
Obama: 63,497,950
McCain: 56,145,889
Total: 119,643,839
Where are the final numbers that affirm this 130M+?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Voting. 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.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Maybe 10 million people voted for local elections but couldn’t stomach the Obama or McCain
November 5th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
The 130 mil figure was an extrapolation based on the first 85% of the people that voted, but I think the West Coast vote was diminished considerably once people basically decided ‘it’s all over’. If you look in Southern California you’ll see many ‘blue’ counties in what are actually very very strong ‘red’ areas. I think many Republicans just stayed home (I also heard the CA numbers were down from previous elections but not sure).
But the math is a bit odd to say the least. Wonder why the media hasn’t caught on to this yet.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Well, you heard it here first. :-)
Yeah, I mean, the math is pretty obvious. Not sure where they’re getting an additional 17 million people. Hopefully we’ll find out in the next couple days.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
There is still a lot of uncounted vote out there, for example, I bet those numbers do not include (1) paper ballots, (2) late, but on time absentee ballots from military and expats, and (3) provisional ballots. Sadly, that last group is probably rather significant as partisan barriers to voting, such as ID requirements, deny many voters a regular ballot.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
You’re undercounting:
a.) The Barr Vote
b.) The Nader Vote
c.) The McKinney Vote (and so on…)
d.) The overseas absentee vote
e.) Provisional ballots
f.) Abstentions in the Presidential race
November 5th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Well as Gerry points out, we know that not every person who voted chose to vote for one of the top 2 guys. And we know that some small portion of the votes hasn’t been processed yet. So we know that the 119 million total you describe must be low. Probably not 9% low, but still.
I don’t give much credit to such pointless hyperbole anyway. There are more people who CAN vote now than there were in the past. So the only comparison that is apples to apples is overall PERCENT turnout.
Any comparison of the number of people who DID vote to the number who COULD have voted if only they registered, cared, and/or got off their fat asses results in a fairly lackluster figure. If say 7+ out of 10 American adults voted, then maybe I’d be impressed. But basically, unless you grade on a curve, then “a record of 130 million voted” has to be translated into “not as lame as usual.”
On the other hand, given that I have a long commute and a busy job, I agree with anyone who suggests we ought to make it more convenient for people to vote. As long as they aren’t suggesting changes that facilitate fraud. I could see voting on a saturday or having voting for a few days or maybe even up to a week.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Your logic has one fatal flaw: adding up the number of votes for Obama and McCain does not give you the total number of people who voted. There were more than two choices for president. It’s easy to forget this given the focus on the two major party candidates, but here in Wisconsin we had 7 or 8 choices for president–including two different Socialist candidates.
Your numbers above (~119.6M major party votes) leave about 8% of the reported 130M unaccounted for. If you adjust for the fact that that is 97% of precincts reporting, you’re still missing about 5%. Third-party candidates together got about 1-2% of the vote, so now there’s only a discrepancy of about 3%. Given that the 130M was obviously a forecast, I’d say they got it pretty good. We’ll have the final totals (including absentee) in a few days or weeks anyway, so I really don’t think there’s anything fishy going on here.
November 7th, 2008 at 10:28 am
[...] Two days ago I asked the question “Where are the 130M votes?” [...]