sultan2075 wrote:The numbers are interesting. If I'm remembering correctly, Bush beat John Kerry by winning about 62 million votes. Obama won... just about 62 and a half million, which is not a big gain--especially considering that Kerry had (I think) 59 million and McCain only got 55 million+ votes. Thus, there were actually less votes cast than last time.
That means that we can't credit the big O's victory to the youth vote or to new voters, at least not easily, without having to remove a bigger chunk of the electorate (which, though not impossible, does seem unlikely). Who stayed home, then? Based on the initial numbers and fuzzy memory, I'm guessing that Republicans and conservative/libertarian independents stayed home, since many of them viewed McCain as far too much of a proponent of big government control of various things. The bailout deal was probably the last nail in the coffin, but the coffin was built in part by W himself, who became a lead anchor on the McCain ticket--and basically started to set himself up to be such after the last election, since in the last four years he has not bothered to justify or defend his policies to the American people. That actually makes the relative closeness of the election rather remarkable.
Nope, there were more votes cast this time around - 136.6 million, opposed to the 122.3 million last time around.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i34a ... QD948LJRG0
The popular vote numbers you mention don't take into account third party candidates (who, according to this, looks like they got about 1.5 million votes combined between all of them)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/result ... andidates/
There's also quite a few state precincts that haven't reported their exact numbers yet - but they were able to call the election anyways, because enough had reported in and one candidate had a sizable enough lead that the electoral votes could be awarded and the state was called - the last precincts holding out don't really matter at this point. Results at the top of this page says 97% are in as of now - as I've been watching, Obama's lead over McCain just keeps getting bigger. Here in America, it really is considered a landslide victory, more so when you look at the electoral votes - especially when you look at the Bush/Kerry race of four years ago, where it was 286 to 252 as opposed to the whopping 349 to 173 of Obama's victory. Not to mention how many red states turned blue this year - my state has gone red every election since 1964 - and Obama won it. It's a huge deal - you can clearly see the difference between the two maps, pretty interesting.
2004:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/ ... president/
2008:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23887017
According to that link I posted up there, Republican states like Wyoming and South Dakota saw turnout drop too.
...with the wind in our face and our arms open wide...