Wally Edge at PolitickerOR thinks that the Obama campaign’s get out the vote drive may have accomplished nothing:
Despite the vast efforts of the Barack Obama campaign to register over 30,000 new voters prior to the recent deadline and despite the alleged "huge projected" voter turnout in the Portland area, Oregon is only six percentage points ahead of where we were four years ago.
When John Kerry had the Democratic nomination locked up back in May 2004, the Oregon primary participation totaled 46% of registered voters. Even with the ongoing duel between Obama and Hillary Clinton we are still at a meager 29% as of last Friday. Here’s hoping the next 24 hours can bring in at least another 20%.
Wally may want to rethink his numbers.
At the time of the 2004 primary, there were 729,233 registered Democrats (the kind of voter who would be voting for Kerry in the primary); that number has risen in 4 years to 866,568. That’s an 18% increase in the number of registered Democrats in a period when the number of registered voters has risen by 8.5% (1,862,919 to 2,021,884).
As of 3:20pm Monday afternoon, the number of Democrats (the kind of voters Obama was trying to reach in the primary season) who had turned in their ballots was 52%. That’s six percentage points ahead (for Democrats, the kind Obama needs to get to vote in Oregon’s closed primary) of the final overall percentage from 2004. And it’s only 2% under the 54% of Democrats who actually voted in primary in 2004.
That 52% of ballots turned in by this afternoon represents 453,479 Democratic ballots. Only 394,439 were cast in 2004. Comparing raw numbers of ballots cast, that’s over 59,000 more Democratic voters a day before the polls close, a 15% increase in volume, nearly twice the percentage increase in the number of registered voters.