MyDD :: Even If We Lose, We Have Already Won

Even If We Lose, We Have Already Won

by Chris Bowers, Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 01:30:38 PM EST

Democratic surges in new voter registration in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia have all been documented. Now there are some very positive signs from Nevada:

A massive spike in voter registrations has placed Clark County on a pace to lead the nation in the percentage of new voters and has resulted in Democratic gains that could affect the general election in a key battleground state.(...)

"We've already passed the number of registration forms processed this year than we did in the last three years combined," said Larry Lomax, Clark County's registrar of voters.

The county has processed some 250,000 forms this year, including 150,000 new registrants, giving Democrats a wider margin of control in the state's most populous county.

From the late 1990s through 2003, Democrats hovered around 30,000 more voters in the county than Republicans. The margin now is 45,000.

Increasing the Democratic margin by 15,000 may not sound like much, but in 2000 Gore lost Nevada by only 21,593 votes, with Nader pulling in 15,008 (source). Nevada is not a lean-GOP state anymore. It is firmly in the toss-up category.

New voter registration also looks good in Pennsylvania. In 2003, for the citywide elections, Philadelphia was the site of the trial run for the massive voter registration drive Democratic groups have undertaken this year (emphasis mine):

Ms. Maxwell, of the League of Women Voters, noted that surges in registration have sometimes dissolved in disappointing turnout. But last year in the Philadelphia mayor's race, independent groups that registered thousands of new voters claimed their turnout was nearly as high as that in the rest of the electorate. Steve Rosenthal, the Democratic chief executive of America Coming Together, said 44 percent of the 85,000 voters his organization registered last year turned out, compared with 49 percent over all.

The last sentence is important. During last year's trial run, the wave newly registered voters turned out at a rate almost equal to the rest of the electorate. And this was not a small wave. 85,000 represented a nearly 10% increase in the total number of registered voters in a city that gave Gore more than 80% of the vote in 2000.

Of course, even though Philadelphia was already looking good coming into 2004, that doesn't mean we slacked off this year:

In Montgomery County, Pa., the elections staff has been working nights and weekends since the week before Labor Day to process the crush of registrations - some 32,000 since May and counting. Today is the deadline for registering new voters in Pennsylvania, as well as Ohio, Michigan, Florida and 12 other states, and election workers will go on mandatory overtime to chip away at the thousands of forms that have been arriving daily.

To help in the effort, the Montgomery office has also added 12 computers, 15 phone lines and 12 workers from other departments - as well as one of the technicians whose usual job is fixing voting machines at the warehouse.

Across the county line in Philadelphia, overtime and weekend duty began in July to deal with what is now the highest number of new voter registrations in 21 years. The office says it is still six days behind the flow, and the last two days have brought about 10,500 new registration forms. At 204,000 [emphasis mine], the number of new registrations has already surpassed that of the last big year, 1992, which had 193,000.

Combine this year and last year, and Philadelphia has added roughly 300,000 new voters to its registration rolls. That is a 35% increase in citywide registration. According to normal turnout (two-third of registered voters in Presidential elections) and voting patterns (80%+ for the Democrat in Philly), that would increase the Democratic Presidential Nominee's margin of victory in Philadelphia by more than 120,000 votes. In 2000, Gore won Pennsylvania by 204,000 votes.

Considering all of this information, even before final new voter registration numbers for the cycle are reported from most states over the next two weeks, there seems little doubt that Democrats have kicked Republican butt up and down the country in terms of new voter registration. In a very real way, this means that we have already won no matter what happens on November 2nd. For many years to come, our tremendous organizational efforts in 2004 have structurally altered the electorate in our favor. This will benefit not only in future Presidential campaigns, but also Democrats in Senate, Governor, and House races. In order to build the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy and a new progressive America, this is exactly what we needed to do not only this year, but also what we need to continue doing in future election cycles. This is how you change the country. On November 2nd, it will be how we shock the world.

Tags: Democrats (all tags)

Permalink :: 5 Comments :: Post a Comment

This is important stuff (none / 0)

Chris Matthews was on the Today show this morning and mentioned this -- saying GOTV drives always help Dems because generally Reps are more likely to vote. This definitely has merit, which we can see when we look at some of the polls earlier this year: overall adults favored Kerry by a wider than registered voters, who favored Kerry more than did likely voters.

Basically, because of demographics, disenfranchised or non-voters like single women, lower wage earners, etc. tend to be heavily Democratic, so it stands to reason that Dem GOTV efforts would be much more successful than Rep. efforts.

by cfr on Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 02:05:23 PM EST

Does anyone know (none / 0)

Have there been polls done of people that are eligible to vote (although they may have not registered)?

That is if we register everyone to vote and everyone votes.

Probably not important. But I am curious.

by bzemky on Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 02:36:58 PM EST

Re: Does anyone know (none / 0)

bzemky, every pollster has a slightly different methodology. If you've been paying attention these last few weeks there has been a great deal of discussion of exactly how pollsters do exactly that. Most reputable polls will tell you upfront what sort of population they have sampled, and how much it reflects one or both of registered voters or likely voters.

One issue is that registered voters are not necessarily likely to vote (see above, where the figure is roughly 49%). Likely voters are divined by responses to questions such as whether they know where their polling place is; if they don't know, even if they are registered they are probably unlikely to actually bother to find it by election day and divert from their schedule to vote. One major problem that can't be easily solved is that a good indicator of being a likely voter is whether you voted in the last election. Newly registered voters are not, of course, able to answer that in the affirmative, so they are going to be excluded from a likely-voters poll total.

by Dan Hartung on Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 03:45:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Now that they are registered (none / 0)

Lets get them to the polls. We need some buses and money to pick them up and get them there.

by Michael on Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:04:46 PM EST

Volunteer workers (none / 0)

I salute all those who are working hard to get-out-the-vote. They will have earned their place in heaven.

by Dorothy Ligon on Mon Oct 04, 2004 at 06:59:44 PM EST

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