CSAE Estimate: About 126 million people voted.
God, reporting on turnout has been a mess. Total votes have been stated, authoritatively, as 121 million, and 131 million and everywhere in between. Nate Silver was snookered by a report saying there are ten million votes outstanding. (probably exagerated) I was snookered by reports saying that when all the votes were counted turnout was lower than 2004. (It wasn't)
Why the confusion? Nothing motivates me to learn like being wrong so I have taken an interest in this.
Curtis Gans is the #1 expert on American turn-out. The Nate Silver of turn-out. He is a famous 1960s anti-war figure who now heads American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate. The day after the election he was saying, to numerous news organizations, that based on the data turnout in 2012 would come in below 2004.
Knowing Gans' work and reputation I accepted that analysis, which suggested that there were only a couple of million votes outstanding.
But Gans, in that way academics have, uses words to mean what they mean in his work. To him, "turnout" means the percentage of eligible voters casting ballots. And that was down in 48 states and is going to be lower than 2004.
On the other hand, we had Nate Silver tweeting a link to an article (not Silver's work, just an article by someone else) saying that as of last night there were ten million votes outstanding, suggesting votes cast was comparable to or greater than 2008. (Some reports claimed that 40% of the total California vote was not reported.)
As with many things, the truth appears to lie somewhere in between.
Curtis Gans' organization released a report on 2012 today estimating that there were 126 million votes cast. That is about 5 million more than 2004 and 3.5 million fewer than in 2008.
So turnout (as you and I use the term—how many people voted) was quite strong in 2012, but shy of 2008.
Rounded to the nearest million, and assuming Obama gets a good majority of the outstanding vote, we are probably looking at:
O - 65 million
R - 61 million
So Obama will have lost roughly 4.5 million vs. 2008 and Romney will have added roughly 1 million to the 2008 Republican vote.
Assuming the Center for the Study of the American Electorate estimate is close to the final tally, which it probably is.
As a mea culpa, I do not stand behind anything I have written about turnout previously, since new information is supposed to change what we think.
Both sides were probably wrong. Obama did not lose 9 million votes. Obama did not match 2008, either. The final tally will probably be right between those estimates, at losing 4-5 million.
And the general Republican internal critique is unchanged. Whether Romney got a million more than McCain or a million less than McCain, there was not notable increase in Republican enthusiasm from 2008.
...Thursday's report, from the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, put 2012 voter turnout at 57.5% of all eligible voters, compared to 62.3% who voted in 2008 and 60.4% who cast ballots in 2004. In 2000, the turnout rate was 54.2%.
The group estimated 126 million people voted in the election, where President Barack Obama defeated GOP nominee Mitt Romney. That means 93 million eligible citizens did not cast ballots.
In all states except two (Iowa and Louisiana) the turnout rate was down from four years ago, though six states had higher total numbers of people voting than in 2008: Delaware, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
States with the highest turnout rates were all either considered battlegrounds in the presidential election (Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire) or had a high-profile down-ballot contest. In Massachusetts, where Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown were battling for Senate, 66.6% of eligible voters turned out...
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/08/report-shows-turnout-lower-than-2008-and-2004/
= new reply since forum marked as read
