-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-admin at lbo-talk.org]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 1:46 PM
I wrote:
> No, I'm sorry, I think you are myth-making here. California voter
>participation in this election was about 6% higher than in 2002. At 56% it
>was comparable to off-year elections since '86 which varied from about
60.5%
>to about 57.5% with 2002 being the outlier at 50%.
To which Doug replied:
"Dunno where you're getting this from."
My numbers above are for percentage of registered voters and they come straight from the California Secretary of State's web site. The figures above are correct and there were slightly more registered voters in 2003 than 2002.
In terms of eligible voters, turnout was 43.38% in '86, 41.05% in '90, 46.98% in '94, 41.43% in '98 and 36.05% in 2002. I can't find the 2003 number for eligible voters, but using the 2002 numbers the back of the envelope says it was 40.08%. That still puts '03 much closer to '98 and '90 than to '02.
From today's San Jose Mercury News:
<http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/6996239.htm>
>VOTE UNDERWHELMING: While we're on the subject of recall, what ever
>happened to the voter stampede to the polls that pundits were
>predicting?
>
>The Secretary of State's office last week said turnout was about 60
>percent -- a respectable showing, but hardly overwhelming
>considering all the media hype. And even that three-fifths figure
>overstates the actual level of participation. That's because it only
>takes into account the 15.4 million who are registered to vote, as
>opposed to the 21.8 million who are eligible.
>
>Based on the latter number, the turnout was about 43 percent.
First of all, I don't know where these guys get their numbers. The Secretary says that there were 21.47 million eligible voters in 2002. It seems unreasonable to think that the eligible population went up by 330K in one year. It only increased by 5K voters between 2000 and 2002. I'd take their 43% number for the case I'm making if it made sense, but I don't know how 8.6 million votes divided by 21.47 million eligible voters comes out to 43%. Given the eligible figure they use, their math is way off the mark.
No, I stick to my original figures. The '03 election was on the low side of a typical off-year election and well above the outlier low figure for 2002.
Finally, Comrade Doug, you haven't dealt with my point that the recall, the Republicans and Arnold seem all to have won the female vote.
I'll tell you what, though, you wrote an excellent article on the Cancun collapse. Good stuff.
peace,
boddi