Most observers are expecting the turnout in the 2008 election to be large. The question is how large. Significantly more voters tend to vote in presidential elections than in non-presidential years, in Texas and elsewhere. For instance, in the 2006 gubernatorial election, 4,399,116 Texans voted. But two years earlier, in 2004, when Republican President George W. Bush was running for re-election and expected to cruise to an easy victory in his home state, 7,410,765 Texans voted in the presidential election. That is 68 percent more than voted in the governor’s election two years later.
In 2008, some Texas election officials think turnout could be as much as one-third higher than in 2004 — despite the fact that Republican John McCain is expected to carry the state. Part of that prediction is based on the enthusiasm among young people and African-Americans for Democrat Barack Obama, and the huge turnout in the Democratic primary earlier this year. In that hotly contested battle between Obama and Sen… Hillary Clinton, 2,874,986 people voted. That was almost a million more votes than the biggest Democratic vote in the 2006 general election — the 1,877,909 cast for Democratic Supreme Court nominee Bill Moody.
But pollsters reportedly are tearing out their hair trying to figure out how to get accurate numbers. One question is how many young people, traditionally poor participants in voting, actually will turn out.
Another is while African-American turnout is expected to increase dramatically, will it?
The Rest of the Story @ MyWestTexas.com > News > Opinion: Pollsters finding the 2008 election difficult to read
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