[lbo-talk] AEI postmortem

Seth Ackerman sethia at speakeasy.net
Thu Nov 4 15:22:18 PST 2004


----- Original Message ----- From: "Ackerman, Tom" <TAckerman at belo-dc.com> To: "'Seth Ackerman'" <sethia at speakeasy.net> Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 4:33 PM Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] turnout not so high after all


> I just came back from a Bill Schneider/ Norm Ornstein post-mortem lunch
(by
> the way AEI serves good food if anything) where they pointed out several
> exit poll findings:
> -- the total turnout of 115 million was not a big gain in turnout.
> - the 18-24 year olds were totally impervious again to the Vote or Die
> appeals.
> -- the evangelical vote was only slightly higher than in 2000, but the
> morality issue appealed to a much broader electorate.
> -- white Catholics for the first time voted R (just barely).
> -- independents broke for Kerry.
> -- instead of a gender gap, there's actually a marriage gap -- single
women
> went for Kerry, married women for Bush.
> -- Rove's coup was in branding Kerry a flip-flopper from early on.
> - The latest Osama tape actually benefited Kerry more than Bush(1/3of K
> voters said it was a very important factor).
> -- The Democratic 527 advertising didn't work as intended -- it only
> activated the base.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Seth Ackerman [mailto:sethia at speakeasy.net]
> Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:21 PM
> To: Ackerman, Tom
> Subject: Fw: [lbo-talk] turnout not so high after all
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> To: "lbo-talk" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 1:01 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] turnout not so high after all
>
>
> > <http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/1103voters.html>
> >
> > Voter turnout in Tuesday's election unlikely to have been higher than in
> 2000
> >
> > Andrea Lynn, Humanities Editor
> >
> > 11/3/04
> >
> > CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Despite the widespread assumption that voter
> > turnout was substantially higher in the 2004 presidential election
> > than it was in the 2000 election, "the numbers suggest a different
> > story," says Scott Althaus, a professor of speech communication and
> > political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> > who conducts research on the effects of presidential campaigns.
> >
> > According to vote totals as of 10 a.m. CST today, between 51 and 52
> > percent of voting-age Americans cast votes in Tuesday's presidential
> > election. In the 2000 presidential election, by contrast, 51.2
> > percent of the voting-age population cast ballots, as reported by the
> > U.S. Census.
> >
> > When turnout rates are compared for battleground and non-battleground
> > states, "a clear pattern emerges," Althaus said. "Provisional
> > estimates for the battleground states - Florida, Iowa, Minnesota,
> > Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -
> > show a combined turnout of 60 percent of voting-age Americans,
> > compared with a combined turnout of 49 percent in all of the other
> > states."
> >
> > For the 2004 voting-age population totals, Althaus used data from the
> > U.S. Elections Project at George Mason University. For votes cast in
> > the 2004 presidential race, he used data from C-SPAN and CNN
> > available as of 10 a.m. CST today. These numbers don't include
> > absentee ballots yet to be counted, or provisional ballots yet to be
> > validated, Althaus cautioned.
> >
> > "If preliminary estimates of 120 million total votes prove accurate,
> > the final turnout rate for the voting-age population could reach 54
> > percent. In comparison, since the voting age was lowered to 18 in
> > 1972, the highest level of recorded turnout was registered in 1992,
> > when 55 percent of the voting-age population cast ballots."
> >
> > Recalculating these numbers using "eligible voters" - which excludes
> > non-citizens and non-eligible felons, rather than voting-age
> > population - Althaus found that 56 percent of eligible voters cast a
> > vote in Tuesday's presidential election, compared with 54.2 percent
> > in the 2000 election.
> >
> > "If preliminary estimates of 120 million votes prove accurate, the
> > final turnout rate among eligible voters could reach 59 percent,"
> > Althaus said. "In comparison, since the voting age was lowered to 18
> > in 1972, the highest level of recorded turnout was registered in
> > 1992, when 61 percent of eligible voters cast ballots."
> >
> > When turnout rates are compared for battleground and non-battleground
> > states, a clear pattern still emerges using the vote-eligible
> > standards.
> >
> > "Provisional estimates for the battleground states show a combined
> > turnout of 65 percent of eligible voters, compared with a combined
> > turnout of 55 percent of eligible voters in all of the other states."
> >
> > News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> > 807 South Wright Street, Suite 520 East, Champaign, Illinois 61820-6219
> > Telephone 217 333-1085, Fax 217 244-0161
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>



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