Was This Really The Biggest Election Turnout Ever?
I’m seeing a lot of media outlets reporting that we had the biggest election turn out ever last night:
More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.
With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.
In 2004, 122.3 million voted in what was then the highest recorded turnout in the contest between President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
But according to other sources I’m seeing more like 119,000,000 votes.
That’s doesn’t even beat 2004 levels of turnout. Even if we include votes for Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin (all of whom were on ballots in most states) we only get to just over 120 million.
Am I missing 12 million votes or so somewhere? Because it seems to me like turnout was actually down. Which would play into the idea that Obama won because conservatives were disappointed with McCain as a candidate.
Update: MSNBC:
Almost 137 million (136,631,825) went to the polls — 64.1% of the voting-eligible population. 1960 saw 63.7% of the populace go out to vote; In 1908, 65.7% voted. It was, of course, the most people ever to go to the polls topping 2004’s 122 million. That’s 12% increase from 2004. For those wondering why the current total vote in the presidential adds up to approximately 117 million, note that it’s going to climb. There is still a ton of vote missing on the West coast.
There are 20 million votes missing on the west coast?
So, where did they all go? California has reported 95% of its precincts, and they can’t be absentee ballots as those must be in and counted on election day.
There’s something fishy going on here.
