Obama Won Without Voter-Turnout Surge Experts Had Predicted

By Heidi Przybyla

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect Barack Obama bet on an unprecedented surge of new voters to carry him to victory last month. He won without the record turnout.

About 130 million Americans voted, up from 122 million four years ago. Still, turnout fell short of the 140 million voters many experts had forecast. With a little more than 61 percent of eligible voters casting ballots, the 2008 results also didn’t match the record 63.8 percent turnout rate that helped propel President John F. Kennedy to victory in 1960.

“I was very surprised on election night as I was seeing the totals as they were mounting,” said Rhodes Cook, a turnout and voting-behavior expert in Virginia.

Experts attribute the shortfall to a combination of reasons: Many disaffected Republicans stayed home. Young voters, particularly those without college degrees, didn’t turn out in the numbers that the Obama campaign projected. In states where the presidential race wasn’t in doubt -- such as Obama strongholds in California and New York, or reliably Republican outposts such as Oklahoma and Utah -- turnout was lower than in 2004.

An exception was fiercely contested Ohio, where turnout fell from 2004 even after the state was targeted as a top priority by both parties.

Obama, 47, did benefit from unprecedented support among black voters and from increased turnout in demographic groups that backed the Democrat, exit polls show. Seven of the eight states with the biggest increases in turnout have large African- American populations. That dynamic probably helped Obama win in North Carolina, Virginia and Indiana, according to experts.

Increased Support

Compared with the 2004 Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, Obama increased support by 14 percentage points among Latinos, by 3 points with suburban residents, and by 17 points from voters earning $200,000 a year or more.

Among various age groups, only voters 65 and older favored the Republican nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain.

McCain, 72, and Obama only fully competed in about a third of the states, where both sides expended enormous resources. In most of them, turnout soared, jumping 12 percent in Virginia, 18 percent in North Carolina, and 10 percent in Indiana, according to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington.

In contrast, there was a 3 percent decline from 2004 in California and a 6 percent drop-off in New York. There also were declines in heavily Republican states such as Utah.

Fewer Republicans

A depressed Republican vote probably accounts for a large measure of the smaller-than-forecast turnout numbers.

In 2004, both parties “did a great job” in turning out their voters, Cook said. This time, Democrats mobilized 9 million more voters than in the previous election, while the Republican support dropped by 3 million votes.

“The Democrats did their job in terms of voter turnout, but the Republicans did not do their job,” Cook said.

That particularly may have helped Obama in Ohio. McCain received 275,000 fewer votes than President George W. Bush did in 2004, while Obama topped Kerry’s total by 43,000 votes.

A chart compiled by Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, shows that Ohio’s turnout fell by more than 4 percent from 2004. In Republican precincts across Franklin County, which includes Columbus, there was a fairly uniform 6-to-7 percent decline in turnout.

TV Advertising

Nationally, the McCain campaign diverted funds from its get- out-the-vote effort for a television advertising blitz in the final week of the presidential campaign in battlegrounds such as Virginia and North Carolina.

Participation by young voters, who showed enthusiasm for Obama’s candidacy during the campaign, rose by only 1 percent from 2004.

National exit polls showed Obama winning 66 percent of voters under age 30, a larger share than President Ronald Reagan garnered in 1984. Among those between the ages of 30 and 44, 52 percent voted for Obama.

Gans attributes the smaller-than-expected turnout to a disparity in participation between college-educated young people and those who didn’t attend college.

“If you limit young people to the college-educated, turnout was quite high,” he said.

Getting Out the Vote

A major contribution to Obama’s victory was an effective get-out-the-vote operation.

Given Obama’s across-the-board gains and the depressed Republican vote, many experts say the election probably doesn’t signal a major realignment of voter loyalties. It will take another four years to determine whether Obama can redraw the political map and cement his party’s gains in former Republican states such as Virginia and North Carolina.

“In four years do we look back and say, ‘It’s morning again in America,’ in which Obama is a Reagan for the 21st century?” said Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and co-developer of the Pollster.com Web site. “Or do we look back and say, ‘another Jimmy Carter -- full of promise but no delivery.’”

To contact the reporter on this story: Heidi Przybyla at hprzybyla@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 2, 2008 00:01 EST

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