There Are No "Missing Voters"

Republican pollster Bill McInturff demolishes an early theory of how Obama won: Voters who didn't show up. In fact, some are still to be counted, and others were affected by Sandy — but swing state turnout was up!

Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, who polls for John McCain, emailed his clients today:

Here is a number you probably have never heard before – 9,500,000.

That is the number of votes ADDED to the turn-out in 2008 between the Thursday after the election and the results being certified!

As of this morning, less than 120 million votes for president have been counted.

Commentators are comparing this to the 131 million votes cast for president in 2008 (132 million total votes cast) and going on and on about the stunning drop in turn-out.

Totally wrong.

Yes, turn-out as a percent of Citizens of Voting Age population will be down this cycle, but, there’s still a chance the total vote cast will be as large or slightly larger than in 2008.

The relevant comparison number is NOT 131 million votes cast for president in total in 2008, it is instead the roughly 123 million votes counted as of Thursday morning after the election last cycle.

This quick 10 page slide deck walks through this math.

It also puts other numbers in perspective:

1) In the nine swing states, the turn-out is UP over the record turn-out of 2008.

2) The overall drop in turn-out is coming from the other 41 states/DC.

3) And for goodness sakes, if anyone bothered to look at the actual drop in the vote, about half (okay, 42%) of the entire drop in turn-out is coming from the 9% of the vote that is the “Hurricane Sandy” region of CT, NJ, NY.

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