Will presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s voter registration drives and appeal to new voters power him to victory in the fall? A clear-eyed blogger analyzes the Obama camp’s theory. Here’s a slice:
… so where were those voters in Indiana? Pensylvania? Even in North Carolina, where he should have had a much better showing if his registration drives had been as effective as claimed? Jeralyn points out that Obama did worse in North Carolina than in Virginia. His efforts didn’t make a difference for him in Ohio, Texas, Massachusetts or California, come to think of it.
The fact is that the contest this year as such, not just Obama, is bringing out a huge number of voters, and half of them are voting for Hillary. Obama is not drawing a statistically significant larger number of people to the polls and he is not increasing his margins among Hillary’s constituency. They are turning out in droves to vote for her.
So what about the millions of new voters who are signing up? Evidently, they are either voting approximately equally for The Precious and for Hillary, or else they are not any larger of a group than is already voting for Hillary.
This brings up an interesting point (well, interesting to a poli sci major, anyway), which is to what degree does Obama’s failure to expand his base constituency as the primaries go on indicate that he has maxed his vote?
UPDATE: And since the Obamaists have been so plug ugly (all this talk of smashing victory with an evenly split vote is a little weird, guys), another dose of castor oil, from the founder of Emily’s List, who thinks Hillary should fight on. Anybody done the calculation on delegates if the Democrats followed a winner-take-all primary process that mirrored the electoral college vote and, generally, the Republican primary?
UPDATE II: And there’s the old-people gap. They could trend McCain. Curse those old gray heads if you must, Orval, but the geezers vote, big-time.