What the ?????? Obama received LESS votes than Kerry in Ohio.

[beachmom]

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/11/1668402.aspx

-- Obama received approximately 34,000 fewer votes in Ohio than John Kerry. McCain received nearly 350,000 votes less than Bush in 2004.

To compare with another battleground (in a cleaner state), look at Wisconsin:

-- In Wisconsin, McCain received 220,000 fewer votes than Bush, while Obama outperformed Kerry by about 180,000 votes.

Wisconsin clearly shows how votes changed. Ohio shows that nearly 400,000 Ohio voters decided not to show up to the polls, OR maybe never existed at all? They need to analyze all these voters in Ohio who chose to stay home. And, no not Greg Palast. Somebody reputable.

[beachmom]

1. Some speculation in the comments that a lot of people left Ohio?

I know the economy is pretty bad there, but it would be helpful to know for sure if they had a loss in population in the last 4 years.

[karynnj]

2. three alternative reasons

1) Kerry worked far harder to get Ohio - Obama, in a year with about 85% saying the country was going in the wrong direction and with plenty of money, had many many ways to win - Kerry had to focus on the swing states. (Given the constraints, that was the best strategy).

2) Obama lost votes from people who were racist - who voted for Kerry, but not for Obama.

3) McCain lost votes of republicans who stayed home in disgust.

I don't buy the "they moved out" as much of an answer. I didn't hear that the number registered declined. In addition, is it likely that 10 times as many Republicans as Democrats left the state - it's hard to see why that could happen. (Consider the Obama numbers include many kids who were 14 to 18 in 2004.)

I thought about some not voting because 2004 caused them to lose faith in the voting system - but the combination of the Republicans likely never believing it and the Democrats now controlling the state, it seemed unlikely. When you add in a reasonable estimate of people prevented from voting - it does show that Kerry kicked ass in Ohio.

[beachmom]

3. I asked over at Kossak land on an Ohio thread, and learned that yes, they DID lose population

from Democratic strongholds:

http://phosnorkapages.blogspot.com/2008/07/census-data-ohio-population-shift.html

Thursday, July 10, 2008
Census Data: Ohio Population Shift Continues

Analysis of the latest census data shows that some midwestern cities are growing modestly -- but none around here. Cleveland continues to lose people like it's on fire. Akron is shrinking, though much more slowly.

Most of Ohio's major cities are shrinking; Cleveland is the top loser nationwide, with Dayton and Toledo appearing among the top ten shrinking cities. But Columbus continues to post impressive gains and Cincinnati is growing as well.

No surprises, really. The old-line manufacturing cities shrink. The winners have knowledge-based industries (e.g. insurance in Columbus, P&G et al. in Cincy). Akron continues to make the transition, though time will tell how successfully.

So if you take the racists (oh, they've got a lot of 'em in OH) plus the population losses plus maybe some folks who preferred experience (Kerry, McCain) over other qualities, I think that explains Obama underperforming Kerry. But what about the 350,000 McCain failed to get? That is a hell of a lot of votes.

Here is the Kos thread.

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2008/11/11/121416/50/7#c7

Edit: Cincinnati did grow and that is a more Republican area. Again, where did the 350K voters go? Thing is, I can see Cincy trending more blue this time, like the Research Triangle in NC. But total votes in the state are down mostly bled from the Republicans, and that is odd.

2nd edit: To be clear I think a lot of Republicans stayed home. I just think it is odd how MANY stayed home in Ohio. As in, maybe they never existed in the first place.

[karynnj]

4. I agree with you

Those cities shrinking should have been mostly Democratic votes - so that could well explain the Obama numbers - if the kids added were less than the number migrating out.

Unless there was migration out or people simply not interested enough to vote for McCain - it does look really fishy. It would be interesting to see the sign in books for areas where the pattern of 2000 2004 2008 has 2000 and 2008 similar and a peak at 2004. The first would be to see if the sign ins match the votes If they do, I would be interested to see how "different" the signatures of the just 2004 voters were from each other.

[beachmom]

5. I wish Nate Silver could be talked into analyzing this. He is pretty

moderate though, and usually skeptical of shenanigans (except in Alaska, where he did voice some suspicion). I can't stand the "stolen election" cottage industry. They did more of a job adding to my skepticism of a stolen election than anywhere else I read. They completely lacked credibility and also betrayed John Kerry over and over again. I would prefer a cold calculated review of the numbers with a good measure of skepticism, comparing 2004 to 2008, population changes, changes in demographics, etc.. It would be useful.

[karynnj]

6. That is is moderate would be a major plus

I agree with you that most of the 2004 was stolen stuff was counterproductive and hid the REAL provable problems that indicated that at minimum Ohio would have been closer in a fair election. The fact is if there were a lay down case - Kerry among others would have made it. It also bothered me that so much was proven - by essentially hand waving and a declaration that it was proven. (Mark Crispen Miller being one of the worst) It also bothered me that both Edwards decided to play games with it for political points with the far left.

My feeling is that for many reasons 2004 was not fair election - starting with the illegal use of the government for political purposes.

[YvonneCa]

8. I'm pretty sure this will be done. The questions...

...are begging for answers.

[YvonneCa]

7. This has been done, and...

...published by Richard Hayes Phillips. I attended a book signing for his book this summer.

[beachmom]

11. No, I mean comparing 2008 to 2004 numbers. Find out which counties

disappeared the GOP votes. Obviously, new registrations need to be factored in.

What is the book you are talking about?

[YvonneCa]

13. It's called "Witness to a Crime" by...

...Richard Hayes Phillips. Canterbury Press, New York.

I agree with you that comparisons between 2000, 2004 and 2008 would be valuable. This book only looks at 2004.

[sandnsea]

15. Registration UP, Turnout down

2004 Registered 7,972,826
Turnout 5,722,433

2008 Registered 8,291,877
Turnout 5,600,022

Here's 4 counties I always thought just looked weird. The bottom two numbers of each set is Bush-Kerry. Their registration for both Dems & Reps increased at nearly identical rates between 2000 & 2004. Now they're all over the place, and that Clinton county appears to have lost half its population.

Clermont 60,287 – Obama 30,124
62,949 - 25,887

Clinton, 6427 – Obama, 3,041
12,938 – 5,417

Warren, 69741 – Obama, 32,372
68,037 – 26,044

Butler 101, 537 – Obama 62,871
109,872 – 56,243

[beachmom]

16. Interesting, Sandnsea. Not enough to sway the '04 election, but it definitely "stinks" to

high heaven. A conservative friend of mine who moved to Ohio in the fall of '04 said something interesting to me in '07. I said the corrupt Republicans were kicked out of office in Ohio. She said "And thank God for that". Nobody likes corruption. If I see corruption on the Democratic side, I want that gone, too, even if it costs our side elections.

Everyone is now talking about Alaska, and the bizarre lack of turnout between '04 and '08. But Ohio is the SAME THING. It's only not being focussed on because Obama won it handily.

[YvonneCa]

9. Interesting comment...

...beachmom: "I just think it is odd how MANY stayed home in Ohio. As in, maybe they never existed in the first place."

[beachmom]

10. Okay, Ohio 2004 experts. Here is the 2008 map:

http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=130:15:0:

Can someone compare this to 2004?

[MarjorieG]

12. Vote tallies aren't accurate, for many reasons, and not always fraud.

The equipment is junk, the scanners don't like dust, often undervote and miss votes, and ballot programming is very hard to do, not always done well by the private companies contracted to do it. We don't check the equipment enough before using, or count the paper ballots enough as canvass, recount or audit, to really verify. Electronic, forget about it. Probably lost a few precentage points nationally this time.

Winning one thing, and then we over analyze voting habits, trends from not good samples.

Enough reasons the GOP couldn't, wouldn't want to steal this, this time, but we need transparency and improvements.

[MonteLukast]

14. Straying off-topic momentarily...

How is Greg Palast disreputable? Too much tinfoil-hattery?

Even if he is disreputable, you have to remember, disreputable to whom. Being riffraff to the Bush administration could actually qualify you for a badge of honor come January 20.

[karynnj]

18. Disreputable is too strong - tinfoil hattery is better

The problem is that he often goes beyond what there is solid proof for and he never considers less evil causes. By casting every oddity as cheating, he loses the credibility that some of the stronger cases have. So, what are some of the more "innocent" ways votes can be lost disproportionately by the Democrats?

Look at all the reasons Marjorie listed and consider the difference between a typical big city polling place and a suburban one. In both cases they are put up, usually over night, with little time to test and fix or replace machines if necessary. Consider that the Democratic vote is concentrated in urban areas and the Republican in rural and the suburban vote is split.

I would imagine that setting up the huge number of city polling places is a daunting task - with far more chance of chaos than in a suburban or rural county. Also, the cities taking advantage of economies of scale likely have far more people voting on each machine than in the suburbs or rural areas. This means when something does go wrong, the consequences are greater. An article I read after 2000, spoke of the fact that it was just because 2000 was that close that the fact that in inner cities there always were votes missprocessed was noticed. It spoke of the fact that allocating money to make this less common meant taking money from something else.

In my suburban county, my precinct has 2 machines (likely because they can afford them) and there are gaps of time when no one is in line. This means that in the peak times, the wait is rarely more than 10 minutes. If one machine broke, the time people in the peak times (and the period afterwards as that queue voted) would have to wait much longer than 10 minutes, but the normal light number of voters at other times would insure that the waits were not near 4 hours anywhere.

As to the machines themselves, the fact that there is even a possibility that they can be hacked - which there is - is a problem. Every good computer person has said that they can be and this needs to be fixed. Now, when we control everything it would be good to work on this because it is the right thing to do. Here is a great article send to us by a good friend that shows that people have been working on this and still are trying to solve this problem http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/10/27/weekly14-UConn-MIT-help-tackle-voting-tech-security.html

[ladym55]

17. Here is a direct comparison from one county

Here is a direct comparison of Summit County from 2004 to 2008, where Akron is located.

2004:

Kerry 156587=56.9
Bush 118558=43.1

2008:

Obama 155105=58.4
McCain 110499=41.6


The Obama campaign volunteer who put these data together noted that 76.4% of registered voters in Summit County voted in 2004. In 2008, fewer than 72% voted.

I'm not sure what happened. I think it's a combination of many things ... Ohio HAS lost population. It's lost so many thousands of jobs, people have had to leave. DHL is leaving the Dayton area and several thousand MORE jobs are going. Obama ran a big operation in Ohio, much larger than Kerry had in 2004. And I expect many in Ohio are deeply discouraged because our economy is SO bad. Many feel that NOTHING will ever change, so why vote? And then add to that a serious thread of racism, especially in the rural areas.

In one area I feel pretty confident. SOS Jennifer Brunner worked very hard to have fair and open elections in Ohio, which meant she had to take on the Ohio Republican Party over and over and over. Mike DeWine's son did everything he could to suppress voting at every turn, but Brunner hung tough. It was very different from 2004 when then SOS Ken Blackwell pledged the Bush campaign he'd deliver the state.

[beachmom]

19. But your arguments make the results even more puzzling

1. Voter suppression was LESS in 2008 than in 2004
2. Obama's GOTV operation was SUPERIOR to Kerry's


Yet Obama ended up with less votes. Now we can say it is due to a decline in population (35K is a reasonable number for that) as well as illogical swing voters and perhaps undervotes by prejudiced people. But all of your arguments say that Obama should have BOLSTERED his turnout, yet he underperformed Kerry.

OTOH, how can anyone POSSIBLY explain McCain getting 350,000 votes less. Given the DECLINE in population, largely from Dem strongholds, I am sorry, that number does not add up. I can understand some GOPers staying home. But the reality is the Appalachian areas voted MORE for McCain than Bush with a higher turnout -- why was that not reflected in those regions of Ohio? Or rather, was it? I just think there were weird things going on in rural Republican strongholds in Ohio in 2004 which may have made a difference. Prior to these results, I thought the #1 hindrance to Kerry in '04 was voter suppression, which was something he could not fight after the fact (and kudos to your SoS who made sure that didn't happen this time). But basically, what I want to know is if there were GOP votes tacked on all over the state, which now that Ohio is cleaner, disappeared in '08. I am not sure if we will ever know.

[YvonneCa]

20. Universities that did studies of 2004 will likely...

...look into discrepancies like this. At least I hope so. The Phillips book...assuming the documentation is truthful...offers a lot of interesting data. He went through precincts...ballot by ballot...where it was possible and documented some interesting things. Now whether his discoveries would be classified as supression...or something more...who knows? Certainly not me.

But I do have an opinion. :7

[ladym55]

21. I see all of your points

I just don't know. I'm very puzzled. I plan on keeping my eyes and ears open to learn more.

Trust me. I was SO excited that Ohio turned BLUE that I missed a lot of details. As I DO learn more, I will make sure to post!