Savvy Michael Barone predicts the election will be all about turnout.
Some elections are about persuasion. This one is about turnout. In past presidential debates, candidates have tried to change peoples' minds and win over undecided voters. In this year's presidential and vice presidential debates, the candidates have tried to increase the enthusiasm of their base. The results have shown up in the polls, most vividly in those that don't weight the results to match the party identification of the last couple of elections.There is also a difference in motivation on the two sides. Democrats are motivated more by hate--not too strong a word--of Bush than they are by positive feelings toward Kerry, the candidate they settled on quickly to avoid the electoral disaster they thought they'd face if they nominated Howard Dean. Republicans are motivated more--not by love, that is too strong a word--but by affection for Bush and for the way he has stood up under the attacks of his opponents and the media.
The balance of enthusiasm can change quickly, as we have already seen. And any significant shift could change the outcome of this election.
An outright wildcard is the effect of newly-registered voters. The registration effort this year has been massive on both sides.
A surge in voter registration that is setting records in the battleground states has led election forecasters to predict the largest increase in turnout in more than a decade.With a little more than three weeks left before Election Day, election officials nationwide report that new voter registrations are still pouring in, boosting the number of registered voters in many states to levels never seen before.
Election officials say that the sharp rise in registration is to a large degree the result of a much more intensive grass-roots canvassing campaign by the Republican and Democratic parties and the campaigns of the two presidential candidates, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry.
"They have been very aggressive, the most aggressive that I've seen in my career," said Curtis Gans, who runs the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
The same political intensity that is driving voter registration to new highs likely will boost voter turnout as well, the analysts said.
Republican National Committee (RNC) officials said they have signed up more than 3 million new Republican voters. Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials said they have exceeded that number, but refused to give any statistics Friday.
The challenge in prognostication is that no one really knows what percentage of these new voters will show up, how they will vote, or if they will prove to be inept at the act of voting (as in Florida 2000), leading to widespread vote spoilage and subsequent allegations of voter suppression.
Journalist John Fund says the potential for both error and fraud is enormous.
[T]he nation's voting systems will be in no better shape this November than they were in 2000, when about 2 percent of all votes for president nationwide weren't counted for one reason or another, the vast majority because of voter error or outdated machines.America's election problems go beyond the strapped budgets of many local election offices. More insidious are flawed voter rolls, voter ignorance, lackadaisical law enforcement and a shortage of trained volunteers. All this adds up to an open invitation for errors, miscounts or fraud.
Confusion and claims of fraud are likely this time around, especially if the election is as close as it was in 2000. Can the nation take another Florida-style controversy?
Indeed, we may be on the way to turning Election Day into Election Month through a new legal quagmire: election by litigation. Every close race now carries with it the prospect of demands for recounts, lawsuits and seating challenges in Congress. "We're waiting for the day that pols can just cut out the middleman and settle all elections in court," jokes Chuck Todd, editor of the political tip sheet Hotline. Such gallows humor may be entirely appropriate given the predicament we face. The 2000 election may have marked a permanent change in how elections can be decided, much as the battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork changed, apparently forever, the politics of judicial appointments.
Election Day may be full of surprises. It's guaranteed to be full of controversy, much of it pre-manufactured.
Posted by Alan at October 11, 2004 11:51 AM