It turns out that voter turnout in November wasn’t as high as some had predicted:
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — President-elect Barack Obama bet on an unprecedented surge of new voters to carry him to victory last month. He won without the record turnout.
About 130 million Americans voted, up from 122 million four years ago. Still, turnout fell short of the 140 million voters many experts had forecast. With a little more than 61 percent of eligible voters casting ballots, the 2008 results also didn’t match the record 63.8 percent turnout rate that helped propel President John F. Kennedy to victory in 1960.
Turnout was higher, though, in the handful of states that were hotly contested:
McCain, 72, and Obama only fully competed in about a third of the states, where both sides expended enormous resources. In most of them, turnout soared, jumping 12 percent in Virginia, 18 percent in North Carolina, and 10 percent in Indiana, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington.
In contrast, there was a 3 percent decline from 2004 in California and a 6 percent drop-off in New York. There also were declines in heavily Republican states such as Utah.
And it appears that Republicans did stay home:
A depressed Republican vote probably accounts for a large measure of the smaller-than-forecast turnout numbers.
In 2004, both parties “did a great job” in turning out their voters, Cook said. This time, Democrats mobilized 9 million more voters than in the previous election, while the Republican support dropped by 3 million votes.
“The Democrats did their job in terms of voter turnout, but the Republicans did not do their job,” Cook said.
Perhaps if they’d put a better ticket on the ballot, people would’ve been motivated to vote for them.
As predicted by whom? The voter turnout was still it’s highest in 40 years. Highest since JFK. That’s 14% higher than the 50% average we’ve maintained in the last ten years or so.