1
1
1
All the excitement generated by the campaign, all the efforts, all the controversy generated the very close to the same election figures that we saw in 2004.
Does this make sense? What about the enthusiasm that the Democrats generated in the primaries. Primary voters are highly motivated. They tend to vote in very high numbers in the general election following the primary.
Democratic Primaries: 2008 Primary Turnout More than Doubled 2004 Turnout
The 2008 Democratic primaries for 34 states showed 34 million voters, twice as many when compared to 2004. In fact, the difference between the two years, 17.6 million, is greater than the vote total for the same 2004 primaries, 16.1 million.
This enthusiasm was seen in both large and small states.
Both 2004 and 2008 were contested primaries but look at these numbers comparing the two years. Increases in new primary voters ranged from 0.8 million to 2.0 million.
The same increases are seen in the smaller states.
This primary phenomenon was discussed in some detail in Michael Collins: Election 2008 - The Difficulty Stealing It This Time, Oct. 10, 2008
Where Are The Votes?
What happened? Did the Republicans simply throw in the towel? Did a big portion of those new Democratic primary voters suddenly forget where the polling place was on Nov. 4? Or was it something else?
Instead of using the reported vote total as the basis to measure the polls and the observed events, we should ask the question - was the 2008 vote underreported? Maybe those 34 million primary voters went to the polls and took a friend. More pertinent, maybe the more than doubling of Democratic primary voters in 2008 was a solid indication that election 2008 would produce another major increase in turnout and total votes?
Moving beyond the political logic and common sense, it's well worth considering the analysis offered by internet poster TruthIsAll. He has modeled and analyzed presidential elections non stop from the 2004 campaign through the present. By analyzing the assumptions behind adjustments to the exit polls and other data, he's developed a "True Vote" model with which he predicted the following.
2008 Landslide Denied: Uncounted Votes and the
Final National Exit Poll, TruthIsAll Nov. 5, 2008
