A Little Statistics Info for This Election Cycle - Food For Thought

I compiled this together from the Census Bureau's information about the last 2 Presidential Elections.

Interesting statistics from comparing census results of the last two elections – and what we could/should be looking at this year as REAL prediction material instead of gibberish we see from our entertainment driven “news” outlets.

First some notes:
Registration grew by about 3% from 2004 to 2008, and people who voted rose around 5%. Conversely, those who did NOT vote seemed to drop by 20% (stats majors can figure out the math there).

Registration and voting increased the most in the South and West (6% roughly for both) while it actually dropped by 1% in the Midwest and Northeast. While the West and Northeast both saw the highest decline in “no vote” (dropped 35% and 21%).

These are not surprising since Obama obviously ignited the most “buzz” in the NE and the West
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Now, demographically women increased their voting rolls 2% more than men, but both increased slightly.

Education played a part in the last election as those with less than a high school education cut their “didn’t vote” results by 39% but also dropped registration and overall voting by 15% and 11% (again, stats majors can chew on that).

Those with higher than a 4 year degree had 8% higher registration and voters, while high school educated voters had a 1% DROP in their voter rolls.

4 year degreed voters grew their rolls by 9% and cut their “didn’t vote” group by 14%.

Here is what I found most interesting though – I looked at the results reported about why people DIDN’T vote.
For white voters:
Refused – 29% increase
Didn’t like Options – 25% increase
Not Interested – 23% increase
Forgot – 42% DECREASE
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For black voters:
Refused – 3% increase
Didn’t like Options – 43% DECREASE
Not Interested – 209% DECREASE
Forgot – 37% increase
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Other interesting highs/lows of the “didn’t vote because” results:

• All demographics (age/sex/race) increased more than 20% for “Didn’t Like Options” EXCEPT Blacks.
  
• All Demographics DECREASED in “Refused” by at least 16% EXCEPT Whites and Seniors (65+ years old).
  
• The only statistics where black voters differed from all demographics were in “Not interested” and “Didn’t like options”…. In both cases, they dropped their “didn’t vote” numbers down significantly while all others increased in both categories.
  

I put all this into a big spreadsheet - not that it's any easier to read than what's available from the USCB online itself:
Census Bureau

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Didn't post this with any "conclusions", but providing some info for others. Although that's not to say I've drawn a couple of conclusions from it.