Report: '08 Voter Turnout Same as '04

What this means is that the election was not swung by the 18-29 year olds, but was decided by the same folks who have decided the last several.

you lost. get over it.

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I read that, and was a bit surprised. I guess the media over-hyped that aspect of it all with the long lines and early voting stories.

Funny how there can be record turnouts in states across the union, yet "no change" in turnout reported.

We really need to get a handle on these elections, and get the corrupt private companies the hell away from our votes and voting process.

I heard the other night, for instance, that the state of Alaska reported turnouts of OVER 100% in many precincts. Can somebody please tell me how you can have OVER 100% turnout? And yet, at the same time that they reported OVER 100% turnout, they were also reported dramatically fewer voters than 2004. Huh?

Equally disturbing is the fact that, even with a supposed 40,000 fewer voters between 2004 and 2008, the EXACT same percentages voted for McBush and Obama as had voted for Boosh and Kerry in 2004. Would somebody care to make an attempt to calculate the astronomical odds against having two entirely different presidential elections, with entirely different candidates, 4 years apart from each other, with 40,000 fewer voters in the latter election, yet still have the exact same precentages for each party's candidates?

Additionally, all final polls showed the criminally corrupt republican senator Stevens to be FAR behind his democratic challenger going into the election, and yet we're now to believe that Stevens may well have won? Really? Since when are final polls off by double digits? One poll had a 22% spread between the two, immediately before the votes were cast. Yet, somehow, by some Christ-like miracle, Stevens was supposedly able to pull it out. Give me a frigging break.

Funny isn't it, Clark. I think we have some major voter fraud up there in Alaska. Yes, Anchorage, Begich's home district, was way underrepresented. Curious!

Recheck the math. The observation about turnout was based on complete 2004 polling numbers vs. incomplete 2008 polling numbers. Current numbers show over a million more voters than 2004, with Obama out-polling Bush by over 3 million votes and McCain receiving 2 million fewer votes than Kerry.

All I know is that about a dozen of my co-workers and friends voted for the first time ever.
Every election I would try to get them to vote, this year I was asked where do I vote.
People were way more jazzed up, you could see it.

WASHINGTON (AP) — America voted in record numbers, standing in lines that snaked around blocks and in some places in pouring rain. Voters who queued up Tuesday and the millions who balloted early propelled 2008 to what one expert said was the highest turnout in a century.

It looks like 136.6 million Americans will have voted for president this election, based on 88 percent of the country's precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots, said Michael McDonald of George Mason University. Using his methods, that would give 2008 a 64.1 percent turnout rate.

"That would be the highest turnout rate that we've seen since 1908," which was 65.7 percent, McDonald said early Wednesday. It also would beat the old post World War II high of 63.8 percent in the famed 1960 John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon squeaker. The 1908 race elected William Howard Taft over William Jennings Bryan.

Source: associated Press http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i34ao3tow5yhj2v7v24HM_wbT8JQD948LJRG0

I thought so! What prompted everybody to vote early, stand in lines and treat a civic duty as an "event"?

The confusion is over using absolute numbers and percentages. Obviously our population continues to rise, so the same absolute numbers would be a smaller percentage. Conversely, the same percentage would mean more absolute numbers.

Bottom line is that there was record voter participation in this election. This is especially true on the Democratic side since many Republicans opted to stay home this time. If Republicans had voted in normal numbers the record participation would have been even higher.

Here is an article pretty much saying what David just commented... plus some neat facts on history of turnout by states etc.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/06/voter.turnout/index.html

Most young people don't seem that enthused about voting unfortunately.

Thousands of votes suddenly magically appearing out of thin air in Alaska. What the hell is going on up there?

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6654

"So much for the massive get out the vote drive."

The article you linked to says there were somewhere between 2.5 and 4.5 million more votes cast in the 2008 election than in the 2004 election.

It also says that the lower-than-predicted turnout was due to Republicans not voting.

Getting 4.5 million (or even 2.5 million) more voters to the polls is nothing to sneeze at. I think it would've helped the Republicans more if they'd picked a better (in terms of appealing to Republican voters) candidate. But apparently they couldn't find one. Anywhere. In the whole United States. So they went with McCain.

Wil,

"The article you linked to says there were somewhere between 2.5 and 4.5 million more votes cast in the 2008 election than in the 2004 election."

Yes, but given population growth over the past 4 years, the percentage increase in voters was negligible.

"So they went with McCain."

McCain was not an ideal choice, but that's the guy the GOP voters went with from the pool of candidates.

"Yes, but given population growth over the past 4 years, the percentage increase in voters was negligible. "

Really? How much was population growth in the US between the 2004 and 2008 elections?

"McCain was not an ideal choice, but that's the guy the GOP voters went with from the pool of candidates."

Which apparently resulted in a bunch of other GOP voters deciding to do something else besides vote on election day.

NPG.org estimates an increase of about 10 million over the four year period, from 283,713,000 to 292,928,000.

http://www.npg.org/facts/us_pop_projections.htm

"NPG.org estimates an increase of about 10 million over the four year period, from 283,713,000 to 292,928,000."

Does Negative Population Growth say how many of those 10 million people were eligible to vote?

wow