Obama's voter reg picks up pace in Virginia

[Hope And Change]

Virginia Adds 49K New Voters in August

By Alec MacGillis

With time running out on its push to register thousands of new voters in Virginia, the Obama campaign is picking up the pace. State election officials told the campaign Friday that 49,000 new voters signed up in August, a sharp increase from the 36,500 who signed up in July and the 28,000 who registered in June.

The campaign had predicted that its August numbers could lag given the difficulty of reaching residents during vacation season. But the August gain puts the Obama campaign very much on track toward its goal of signing up 150,000 new voters by the early October voter registration deadline, on top of the 142,000 new voters who registered during primary season.

There is no way of knowing how many of the newly registered will vote for Obama, especially since Virginia does not record voters by party affiliation. But the campaign is encouraged by the demographic profile of the new voters -- about 40 percent of those who registered in August are aged 25 or under.

The campaign predicts that if it can add 150,000 new registrations before early October, it will net about 60,000 votes out of that in November, assuming that 80 percent of the new voters are for Obama and that they turn out at a rate of 75 percent. Those votes could add up to about 1.75 percent of the anticipated state vote -- not enough to make up for the eight-point edge George Bush had in 2004, but possibly enough to tip the state Obama's way if he can also make gains with existing voters.

Nationally, more than 2 million Democrats have been added to the rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation, according to the Associated Press. Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states during the same period.

Posted at 3:50 PM ET on Sep 6, 2008


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/06/obama_helps_register_49k_new_v.html

[bluestateguy]

1. I feel good about Virginia

Tim Kaine's handpicked Secretary of the Commonwealth controls the vote counting too.

Not their people. Our people.

[Muttocracy]

2. good stuff. nt