Great, isn't it, that after two days CNN has finally admitted that the big talk of a huge turnout was a fraud and a mistake?  American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate concludes that "voter turnout in Tuesday's election was the same in percentage terms as it was four years ago-- or at most has risen by less than 1 percent."

 

Remember the claims -- on their website as recently as Thursday afternoon-- that 148 million Americans had voted,even though they'd only managed to count some 122 million votes? Today (Thursday) on my radio show  I begged, repeatedly for someone to explain the missing 26 million voters. 

 

Now this American University Study declares all the prior nonsense inoperative and claims that only 126.5 million to 128.5 million actually voted, though even these dramatically reduced figues still  seem to me inflated. If you add up the numbers cast for all Presidential candidates they don't come up to 126.5 million.... still several million below that number.

 

But for the sake of argument, let's use their numbers. The authors of the study blame the lower than expected turnout on a "downturn in the number and percentage of Republicans going to the polls" and thereby echo the claims of many bitter conservatives that GOP voters failed to show up for McCain the way they showed up for Bush.

 

But as John Adams said (and Ronald Reagan echoed), "facts are stubborn things." If the American University report is correct, and AT LEAST 126.5 million voters showed up, and if 28.7% of them said they were Republicans, then that means a turnout of at least 36,300,000 Republicans. And how many GOP voters showed up last time to support President Bush? With 122 million voters going ot the polls, and 30.0% of them self-identifying four years ago as Republicans, that means 36,600,000 Republican voters.

 

In other words, that makes for an insignificant difference of 300,000 fewer Republicans, in an election that Obama won by some 7,000,000.

 

Moreover, if you use the higher numer provided by American University, suggesting that 128.5 million voters cast their ballots this year, then that means that 36,880,000 Republicans participated-- an INCREASE of Republican voters of 280,000, and not a decline at all!

 

That would be amazing, given the evidence that many Americans switched their registration and orientation from GOP to Independent or Democrat during the frustrating second term of Bush. The numbers, in fact, suggest that a higher percentage of all those who consider themselves Republican turned out for McCain than showed up for George W. Bush. Even if the numbers of Republicans at the polls stayed virtually the same, there were fewer people in the population at large who identified as Republican, so fewer GOP'ers to draw from. That means that since McCain and Palin drew the same number of Republican voters from a smaller overall pool of Republicans, they generated at least as much enthusiasm as did President Bush four years ago.

Moreover, McCain (according to the Edison-Mitofsly standard exit polling used everywhere) got 90% of the Republican vote-- compared to Obama's 89% of the Democratic vote.

 

In other words, McCain lost because he lost independents by a sizable margin. He didn't blow the election because Republicans failed to turn out for the McCain-Palin ticket, or because they turned away in big numbers to some other candidate.

 

Those Republicans who threatened to stay home because of their distaste for McCain, or to vote for some fringe candidate joker,  never materialized in substantial numbers -- in the same way that the disgruntled Hillary Democrats who threatened to stay home or vote for McCain didn't seem to materialize in any substantial numbers.

 

Conservatives who want a more ideologically pure party may not welcome the truth, nor will liberals who made ridiculous (and unsubstantiated claims) about an Obama "revolution" and a huge surge in turnout.

 

But hte facts are becoming unmistakable, undeniable: the turnout this time was virtually identical to 2004, with almost an identical percentage of self-identified Republicans (28.7% this time and 30.0% four years ago).

 

Independents, meanwhile, comprised some 40% of this year's electorate. McCain lost those independents decisively to Obama, while Bush won the independents against Kerry. That fight for the uncommitted, non-partisan voter determined the outcome of this year's election, and not any vagaries of GOP (or Democratic) turnout.

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The piece from CNN's "Political Ticker" is linked here......