Just a quick drive-by in between walking the dogs.
The turnout at our precinct has been unexpectedly light. Even including the early voting and absentees I doubt we’ll hit 65%. That’s very, very low for this well-informed usually quite engaged area. I really have no explanation.
The other two precincts with whom we share polling places are seeing the same thing.
Make of it what you will.
Is it possible that turnout was light because of early and absentee voting being so high?
Maybe it is because elections in one party states do not really matter as much. Everyone knew that Obama would win big in Illinois. Why go out of your way to vote for something that is preordained.
However, image in about eight years when the Republican Party has really started collapsing and everyone knows that the Democratic nominee will be the next president. The Democratic Primary will be the real presidential election and people will be more interested as long as the media does not decide the issue before it gets past New Hampshire.
No. Even taking early and absentee voting into account the turnout in the precinct was only 55%. That’s considerably lower than the historical expectation for this precinct.
Illinois awards its Democratic delegates proportionately, so the margin of Obama’s victory mattered, but from personal discussions a lot of Illinoisans did not know or understand that.
However, image in about eight years when the Republican Party has really started collapsing and everyone knows that the Democratic nominee will be the next president.
Superdestroyer, you sound like a time traveller – from 2000. Wrt the GOP, the future is now.
Icepick,
the Democrat authors who wrote about the permanent Republicans Majority knew that they were wrong. The authors applied political correctness and refuse to acknowledge taht different ethnic and racial groups have very different voting patterns.
In the long run, the Republicans are going to be buried under a demographic avalanche of black and Hispanic voters. President Bush’s incompetence just sped the process up.