Record Turnout? Not So Much.

OT - I like the new banner. Now if someone could do something about the moderation...

KT I looked for you in the media row in Grant park but I couldn't find you. I would hae loved to converse with you wihtout fear of moderation:)

I hope that the MSM will do a better job this time around and follow your lead in highlighting the vote shifts. In 2004 young people got short shrift even though the under 25 set increased the vote by 11 points, they didn't get much credit because the overall percentage of the electorate remained the same.

So blame the Republicans for our failure to reach historic proportions of civic engagement?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

The lessons of the Clack vote writ large. For years Democrats took African American votes for granted and no one seemed to understand that when Blacks felt betrayed by Democrats they stayed home. Now you see Republicans doing the same thing. So we do have a lot in common -- party loyalists who are not members of the nut brigade behave similarly when taken for granted.

So much for Palin "energizing" their voters.
.
Palin is the gift that keeps on giving.

KT -- I know and poor me I got stuck near FOX, what a blow.

Yeah and I was in a cab today where the driver admitted he was a Republican (although anecdotal- it's still odd behavior for regular voters to admit they are a member of the losing team)but said that not only couldn't he vote for McCain because of Palin, he said some of the crazy things being said by people in his party is making him question whether he should just register and not pick a party.
.
So let the blood bath begin. Democratic percentage is liable to continue this upward trend.

I'd frankly take all that with a grain of salt if voter fraud or malfunctions are not accounted for. For example, I discovered that sometime between 2006 and 2008 that I had been essentially registered four extra times; 4 variants of my name (some with a middle initial, "nickname" versions of my first name, one outright misspelled, etc.) all sharing the same address: mine. This was confirmed when I received 5 literatures for these various names during the 07 primaries.

Judging by the sheer number of provisional ballots I saw this year (including me, thanks to this issue), I probably wasn't the only one. Whether or not it's voter fraud or simple errors (probably the latter), I picture all of those fake names of mine going on to skew the voting statistics one way or other.

Kind of off topic, but it appears Alaska was rigged. The polls for all 3 races were off about 12-14 points in the Republican favor. At the same time, voter turnout including the absentees they say are left is at 54%. Turnout in 2004 was 66%.
.
You had very enthusiastic Obama supporters, and you had the Governor of Alaska running, and voter turnout dropped 12%. Which is about the same numbers that the polls were wrong in the Presidential race, the Senate race, and the house race.
.
Yeah, that is totally believable. Alaska gets it's first member of the ticket, and 20% of the electorate from 2004 decides to stay home. Whatever.

This guys sounds extremely confused, as KT noted...don't buy it. Wouldn't we measure voter turnout with a whole number and not a percentage?

FAIL!

KT--can you reconcile Gans' numbers with these?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_11/015545.php

Reading WA-MO, one would logically conclude that this is the greatest turnout in nearly a century.

KT - what are you hearing about the very peculiar low Alaska vote - see Nate Silver?

This was the lowest turnout in Alaska's relatively short history. In 1960-2004 there were higher turnouts than in 2008. That is really odd.

Watching Hardball I'm trying to wrap my head around the Republicans kicking out folks like Kathleen Parker and Chris Buckley for saying Sarah Palin wasn't ready, when the McCain campaign is now letting us know that SP didn't know what countries are in North America, and genuinely doesn't know that Africa is a continent, not a country.
.
Apparently their sin was actually letting the American people know this before they had a chance to vote. We were only supposed to find out when it could be used as an excuse for why McCain lost.
.
Is there any limit to the confused mendacity of this crowd? No wonder they've lost almost everybody who uses a brain.

Trifecta- follow the comments section in the entry over at 538- several of the natives weigh in on the matter. I also believe that Warren Olney had a segment on To the Point on NPR yesterday about what the hell might have happened. Personally I won't worry too much until we see the final figures.

Here's more on the Alaska figures, from mudflats. I'll post it on another thread, too:
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/crunching-the-numbers-in-alaska/

[...] memories- http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/11/06/record-turnout-not-so-much/ . KT and Gans a month ago- "Despite lofty predictions by some academics, pundits, and practitioners [...]