For all Obama’s professed ability to motivate new voters, it seems that more people turned out for Kerry vs Bush than for McCain vs Obama.
2004 Popular Vote: 121,069,054
Bush 62,040,610 Kerry 59,028,444
2008 Popular Vote: 118,225,016
Obama 62,682,389 McCain 55,543,527
Those figures may be preliminary, but considering the population growth in the past four years and the hype surrounding Obama, it’s interesting what the clear light of November 5th has to say. (For one thing, it’s seems he’s scarcely more popular today than Bush was two years into the Iraq war.)
Related: Short coat tails. Gay marriage bans look to have passed from Florida to California. So much for the end of social conservativism.
More on the numbers here. As commentor Free Thinker points out, considering his “unprecedented half billion dollar war chest, total media subservience, timely stock market panic, celebrity endorsements” (not to mention the massive potential for voter fraud in certain precincts) perhaps the Democrats Chicago machine should be asking themselves what went wrong?
Nov. 6 Update – American University’s Center for the Study of the American Electorate (pdf)
Despite lofty predictions by some academics, pundits, and practitioners that voter turnout would reach levels not seen since the turn of the last century, the percentage of eligible citizens casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election stayed at virtually the same relatively high level as it reached in the polarized election of 2004.
Four out five of the last Democratic presidential contenders have gotten the majority of the popular vote.
Something to think about.
It looks like 2 million switched to Obama, and 5 million stayed at home. Where was the MASSIVE TURBNOUT described the media?
Or, possibly, 1 million new voters, and 6 million conservatives stayed at home.
That’s how I work. As a Conservative, of the Libertarian sort, I have nowhere to go. If my party stinks, I stay at home. I don’t go voting for the sake of it, unless, of course, I wish to make a positive abstention.
Or, possibly, 1 million new voters, and 6 million conservatives stayed at home.
That’s how I work. As a Conservative, of the Libertarian sort, I have nowhere to go. If my party is not conservative, I stay at home. I don’t go voting for the sake of it, unless, of course, I wish to make a positive abstention.
Perhaps this might explain the increased voting numbers…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P2TPwrU4c4
Vargo, that fact suggests that Conservatives vote with their buttocks when they don’t like their candidate or party.
Vargo:
Ever heard of the Electoral College?
That is who decides who is the Prez.
You can look it up….
Whoooeeee…I’m lining up for some free cash — and I want allot! Free mortgage, heat, health care, education, better job and stick it to da man — thanks uncle Obama! I’ll be around to vote you in another 4 years.
Uncle Obama, where did you go? Hey, it’s pretty dark in here — turn on the lights!
Vargo, it means nothing to win the popular vote, when a populous state such as California votes hugely for the Democrats every time. California alone gave Obama an extra 3 million votes over McCain. Eliminate California from the election, and only 1 of the past 5 presidential candidates won the popular vote.
So here I sit in the “have not” province of Ontario, thanks to tax and spend Liberal do gooders. The last time the US Democrats held the triad of power was during the Carter administration. I remember it well, because the economic isolationist policies in the US led to the worst recession in Canadian history. Granted it was because Jimmy Carter was weak, but is Obama strong enough to stand up to Nancy Pelosi? Arguably the most powerful feminist in the USA at this time…Pelosi has said “give us (democrats) the power and you will not recognize America when we are done”…that’s what I, as a working Canadian, am afraid of! Facts are facts…Republicans are good for business, Canadian and American. Democrats have a long history of protectionism…..we best be looking to the EU and Asia to balance out our trade, because I think America is about to become business for Americans only….It should prove to be an interesting 4 years.
Hard Right….
Right on!!! Harper has to take the axe to the Communist Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and shut it down. Please1 Please! say it will happen. There’s a billion saved towards the deficit. There hasn’t been anyone on CBC that I agree with what they have to say since The Friendly Giant, Rusty and Jerome.
TSN can carry the hockey games.
Has anyone ever asked or answered this question re slavery in the USA.
Where did the slaves come from, and who sold them to the slave traders. Why have those African countries or their tribal leaders never been blamed for kidnapping these rival tribe members and selling them to slave traders.
Put the blame where it belongs.
Anyone watch Peter Mansbridge last night? He kept saying “more good news” everytime a state went Obama.What a joke!
“For all Obama’s professed ability to motivate new voters, it seems that more people turned out for Kerry vs Bush than for McCain vs Obama.
2004 Popular Vote: 121,069,054
Bush 62,040,610 Kerry 59,028,444
2008 Popular Vote: 118,225,016
Obama 62,682,389 McCain 55,543,527
Those figures may be preliminary, […]”
++
Uh huh. Which rather renders your claim “inoperative” [as they say]
In fact —
“2008 easily outdistanced 2004’s 122.3 million, which had been the highest grand total of voters before.”
Latest calculated — [It takes weeks in some states]
120 million
Popular vote 63,804,702 vs 56,359,081
Estimated —
Committee for the Study of the American Electorate at American University [..], estimated the total votes to be between 126.5 million and 129 million.
&
“It looks like about 133.3 million people voted for president, based on preliminary results from the country’s precincts tallied and projections for absentee ballots” George Mason Univ.
Based on above estimates
69.7 million vs 61.6 million
&
67.1 million vs 59.2 million
“2008 a 62.5 percent turnout rate”
“Republican turnout rates are down quite a bit, while Democratic turnout rates are up”
By the highest turnout estimate, McCain got almost as many votes as Bush 2004 , while Obama got 7.5 million more. [popular today than Bush was two years into the Iraq war]
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_10907025
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2008
The Canadian media are so in the tank for Obama, they should be wearing decompression suits.
I guess it’s not that kind of tank, right?
Anyway, bring on the Canadian Obama, no doubt his initials would be J.T., we might as well ship both of them back to hell together.
Just to keep the post up-to-date, the latest numbers are:
Obama: 64,058,827 (53%) (349 EC)
McCain: 56,500,055 (46%) (163 EC)
So, Obama currently has a 7% lead in the popular vote, and a 34.5% lead in the Electoral College vote. He now stands at 2,018,217 more votes than Bush in 2004, which was the previous record for most votes by any candidate ever. (He’s also 5,030,383 votes ahead of Kerry’s total, the previous highest total ever for a Democrat). He also has the highest percentage of the vote for a Democrat since LBJ in 1964.
Explain to me again how that’s all supposed to be a disappointment?
Kate’s post made little sense to me yesterday, but given the 1,376,438 votes that have been counted for Obama since then (and the fact that many votes are still being counted, and in some States probably will be for some time) I fail to see how even Kate could still think the premise of the post makes sense. If the Democrats really are wondering what went wrong, after winning more than 2 million more votes than any Presidential candidate ever, their highest percentage of the vote in 44 years, and likely 67.7% of the Electoral College, one has to wonder just what the heck they were expecting!!!
On expectations:
I’d also note that Obama beat McCain by over 7.5 million votes.
That’s pretty good.
Clinton beat Dole by about 8.2 million votes in ’96, but whatever you think the Democrats hopes were for Obama v. McCain, I don’t think one can argue with a straight face that anyone thought it would be anywhere NEAR Clinton v. Dole. (On the E.C. side, Clinton/Dole was 379/159 whereas Obama/McCain looks like it’ll probably end up being 364/174, again, closer to the ’96 numbers than I would have thought!).
Isn’t surprising how the ‘Feel Good’ message of “Hope and Change” is grounded in sociopathology?
“The heart is utterly deceitful, who can understand it?”
“The tongues of men are filled with deceit.”
— Shakespeare, Henry V
For those talk of the hatred of Bush, how ’bout Congress??? Bush has higher approval ratings – more than twice as high! So why did you Dem’s re-elect the people that you hate worse than Bush??? Makes no sense to me. But just wait – NO excuses now for Dem’s. The ball is TOTALLY in their court. When they don’t come through, there will be no blaming Bush.
Again, not to harp on it, but here’s the current total (sorry, but every time I go to see if CNN has called North Carolina and Missouri yet another 50,000 votes have been counted):
Obama: 64,442,907
McCain: 56,748,564
So, Obama is now 2,402,297 votes ahead of the previous record for the most votes EVER, and 5,414,463 votes ahead of the previous record for the most votes ever won by Democrat.
If getting almost 5.5 million more votes than any other Democratic candidate in the history of the Republic (and they’re still counting remember) isn’t “getting out the vote” then I don’t know what is. It wasn’t the responsibility of the Obama team to get McCain supporters out to the polls, so I don’t see how the fact that McCain got (at this point) 2,279,880 less votes than John Kerry is somehow a failure of the Democratic get out the vote efforts.
I feel confident that no Democratic strategists are asking “what went wrong” and pondering why Obama “only” got 5.5 million more votes than any other Democratic contender for the White House since 1776.
In reply to the November 6th update above, I imagine we won’t know the actual turnout (both total and percentage) for a while, especially since it appears as though just since my last comment yesterday at 6:02pm, almost another million votes have been counted (919,994) but I wonder from a conservative point of view if unremarkable turnout would be a good thing, or a bad thing?
After all, I was always under the impression that the reason Obama was doing so well and was expected to be so successful on election night was supposed to be because he was expected to bring out millions and millions of new voters, and an historically high turnout of young voters – i.e. the argument was “It’s not so much that voters are turning to Obama as it is that Obama is bringing large numbers of previously non-voters into the process”. However, if voter turnout barely changed, and there wasn’t the predicted huge surge in youth turnout, couldn’t one argue that this means that huge numbers of voters shifted from the Republican ticket to the Democratic one? Or, perhaps Obama DID increase voter turnout substantially, but only among Democrats, while Republicans stayed home in even larger numbers than we presume. It’ll be interesting to see.
I really don’t think we’ll know what the voter turnout really was for a couple of weeks, but I’m just not convinced that roughly “average” voter turnout in 2008 would necessarily be good news for the Republicans. If voter turnout in 2008 was remarkably large, I think Republicans could argue “This year was an anomaly, and when voter turnout returns to traditional levels in 2012, we’ll not have a hard time making up the 7.9 million vote gap we see in 2008”. If voter turnout was pretty average though, doesn’t that make it MORE remarkable that Obama got over 65 million votes (well, he’s at 64,985,623 at this second, but I’d guess that’ll get above 65 today pretty easily, given yesterday’s increases).
Anyway, it’s all speculation at this point, and I’m sure the numbers will be well crunched by Christmas and we’ll know a lot more. It seems to me though that if Barack Obama managed to beat the previous record for the most votes ever for a Democratic candidate by over 6 million votes (and the record for most votes ever for any candidate by over 3 million votes) all without bringing a dramatic number of new voters to the polls, that might not be great news for the Republicans.
I just spoke to a liberal and she told me about Obama’s victory;
” the slave is now the master ”
scary…
Posted by: Friend of USA at November 5, 2008 10:53 AM
The above post from this blog is a perfect example of how backward some are in Saskatchewan and the haters that can be found on this site who support an uneducated view of the world. BTW Kate, check out Canadian voter turnout in our last federal election. What does that say about our elected leader?
“An estimated 59.1 per cent of Canadians cast votes in Tuesday’s general election — a figure that appears to be a record low in the history of Confederation.”
The mere fact that many who were supporting McCain, like clockwork, called in to John Gormley live and could not see anything decent or good in the historical act of progress that occurred Tuesday, says something about this province and the shallow base some feel they need to pander to.
I just spoke to a liberal and she told me about Obama’s victory;
” the slave is now the master ”
scary…
Posted by: Friend of USA at November 5, 2008 10:53 AM
The above post from this blog is a perfect example of how backward some are in Saskatchewan and the haters that can be found on this site who support an uneducated view of the world. BTW Kate, check out Canadian voter turnout in our last federal election. What does that say about our elected leader?
“An estimated 59.1 per cent of Canadians cast votes in Tuesday’s general election — a figure that appears to be a record low in the history of Confederation.”
The mere fact that many who were supporting McCain, like clockwork, called in to John Gormley live and could not see anything decent or good in the historical act of progress that occurred Tuesday, says something about this province and the shallow base some feel they need to pander to.