I was seeing some people saying how voter turnout in 2008 blew the lid off of 2004's numbers and since Obama won by a landslide, this proves the country is really behind him.
Actually...
I already demonstrated that Obama only got 52.5% of the popular vote, so not exactly a landslide. So how was voter turnout?
I'm having trouble tracking down good numbers right now, as I guess it's too early, but here's what I could find so far:
Voter turnout same or slightly higher than 04
Registrations were way up (ACORN?) but actual turnout was not.
I actually think it's closer than that CNN blog says. They're using "124 million" as voters in 2004 (and another CNN story says it "shattered 2004's mark of 122 million" -- the 2004 number keeps dropping!) but the census table I'm looking at right now says 125.7 million voted in the 2004 presidential election. That's 58.3% of the voting age population for that time.
Let's see... voting age population for this election was 231.2 million, so if 127 million voted in 2008 (latest preliminary estimate I could find, Nov 6th) then we're at 55%?
Hmm, that can't be right. That shows us as actually having a lower percentage turnout this year than in 2004.
Well, we'll check again when there are some final numbers, I guess. I would love to see the Census Bureau report on it but it looks like those don't come out until the following spring.
Don't believe everything you hear about Obama. Look it up for yourself first.
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