On 11/15/2010 8:44 PM, Doug Henwood quoted:
>
> In 2008, Obama won 69.5 million votes. So about 29 million Obama voters did not show up in 2010.
>
First of all, comparing turnout in a midterm election with turnout in a presidential election makes no damn sense at all.
Compare 2006 with 2010. In 2006, 18-29 year olds were 12% of voters; in 2010 they were 11%. In 2006, self-described liberals were 20% of voters; in 2010, they were 20% again. Democrats as a share of the electorate only sightly changed: from 38% to 36%. As this piece shows, the main difference in turnout was that those self-described independents who showed up were much more likely to call themselves conservatives rather than moderates this year; in 2006, self-described independents were more likely to be moderates rather than conservatives:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/william-galston/78918/its-the-ideology-stupid-midterm-elections
But most importantly, since I assume this argument is jumping off of the Washington State tax vote, do you really think a change in turnout could have reversed a 65% to 35% loss?
SA