Why the large voter turnout?

Why did so many vote?

Hopefully this will become an increasings trend.

What made this election different from previous elections and lower voter turnouts.

Was is 9/11?

A threat to the U.S.?

Are people just getting smarter?

With the war, the economy and moral issues at stake, I believe there was more on the line now then in prior elections.

Simple, There was great support for Bush and great hate for Bush. Plain and simple. Notice it had nothing to do with John Kerry.

Did anyone report a percentage of registered voters that came out yet?

I really cant see any signs that anyone has been more wiser, based on the results my guess is that people are more scared.
9/11 and the terrorwar on terror has a role ofcourse.

Hmm, in response to your brainbuster question, here is a simple answer.

BECAUSE AMERICANS WANT TO SELECT THEIR PRESIDENT!

To Bring up another point, you know that choose or loose s***. Yeah turns out according to a MTV poll a QUARTER of the people say they didn't watch it.

IT'S THE ELECTION YOU IDIOTS!! These people do not deserve to vote. I was monitering the whole election on CNN and of course ATS

forgive me for the lack of a source, but the projection is nearly 70% of registered voters turned out.

Let's see what the analyses say about in a couple of weeks about how large the voter turnout was, whether the figures stack up, how many phantoms there are and how many disenfranchized voters there were.

Despite a "record" turnout more people stayed home (40%) rather than vote for either candidate (about 30% each).

At least decent Americans can claim that they are in the 2/3 majority who does not support Bush.

as an aside, large voter turnout usually favors the democrats. What went wrong?

I think it was larger for a couple of reasons:

1) the war

2) a fear of having a repeat of 2000

From what I saw in my little corner of the world there was massive effort on both sides to get people to vote. I also think that there are more people who felt there was so much at stake this time and decided they needed to vote.

Its hard to motivate folks when all is hunky-dory.

Originally posted by Bob88
as an aside, large voter turnout usually favors the democrats. What went wrong?

It rained in several key states That is usually enough to keep less motivated people at home.

Originally posted by Bob88
as an aside, large voter turnout usually favors the democrats. What went wrong?

I understood that to be the case as well.

Was it The Diebold Factor?

.

Considering how polarized Americans were and the abject hatred displayed toward Bush, I am frankly quite surprised about a 3.5 million margin, made more so by how many undecided states Kerry won versus the two most contentious he did not. I am loathe to think the electronic voting machines have anything to so with the results, but considering the voter fraud scandal in the past election, the refusal to carry a paper trail, and what seems like some rather lax registration and voter identification issues, I cannot rule out this time fraud was accomplished with the finesse it lacked previously. Seems the democrats voted first given the exit poll results toward the earlier part of the evening.

I was watching the coverage last night on CNN, and was keeping track of some of the states, particularly the undecided. Arkansas, Arizona and New Mexico were bouncing back and forth between the candidates, Kerry opened up quite a lead in both and the next thing you know, the numbers start to climb heavily in favour of Bush. At one point Judy Woodruff(?) looked stunned as she announced she was just handed a new result that showed a state too close to call has suddently increased by several thousand votes. I believe this was either New Mexico or Arizona. There is not a peep about it today.

I think the Democrats are losing their grip on their voting blocks. Bad for dems. Consider the young GOP voters, and the black vote that doesn't support gay marriage. And the obvious, the high turnout didn't work in their favor like it did in the past. The DNC has some work to do!

55 - 60% is hardly a 'high turnout'. It is higher than the more recent pathetic showings but it is not in itself all that great, wouldn't you say?

(In the UK our public TV commentators worry about such low numbers, not applaud them.)

[edit on 3-11-2004 by sminkeypinkey]

California apathy hit us. More people in Ohio voted than people in California.


That's only the popular vote though. Sometimes you just... lose, it wasn't our night.

It has been a while since it has been your night, eh Nerdling?

Apathy is bad for dems, and voter turn out isn't good for dems anymore. Dems need some major revamping