But Obama has a small lead in registered voters.

but (IMO) people are also sick of republican lies and bullshit. Voters are not buying that brand any longer. They are sick of a trickle-down economy that never quite waters their roots and people want a man for president, who understands them and will work to represent them, in the governments dealings with the business community. Americans see this in Obama (sometimes they see more than is really there) and they don't care if he is black.
The pundits don't see this because the system supports them well. They are identified as successful and validated by the status-quo. They believe they deserve the positions they hold and see Obama as a usurper in a house that does not belong to him.
They have convinced themselves that Obama was elected, last time, because Bush had soured Americans on republican policy and because Obama was a novelty or a fad and not because people really supported the policy positions that characterized Obama's campaign.
These are the same sorts of mediocre white men and women who sit on hiring boards and reject minority applicants "because we need the best possible candidate for the job". What they are really saying is that they need a white person for the job and that is how they assess President Obama. A token, a novelty, an affirmative action candidate, for them this is who Obama is and they can't understand anyone seeing him differently.

Your insight is on the money.

where mediocre, milquetoast workers, who perform their duties but never distinguish themselves, argue that the elite force, of which they are a part, will be watered down if even one "less than excellent" candidate becomes a member. By "less than excellent" they mean different than them.

had nothing to fear.

The turnout in NJ and NY was lower due to Sandy. You could argue a high percentage of those would have gone for Obama.

That's what they kept saying. It was never true. I'm not sure that even the job approval numbers told the story. That would depend on the exact wording of each poll. The job Obama set out to do wasn't finished. I think a lot of people gave him less than total approval in those poll who still thought he was doing the best that anyone could under the circumstance. And personal favorablity was never all that low.

Bush's margin over Kerry was 3.01 million, which changes your points that you were making. Can you edit your post so that it is accurate? When we make points backed up by data we need to make sure the data is spot on.

(08) 2,401,462
(12) 2,566,632

6.89%

Damn....

and for nano second I thought Romney might take CO, but we had Amendment 64 which increased turnout.

for 2014-16

Ohio's turnout went from -4.2 yesterday to -2.67 now. Obama's lead in Ohio has gone from up 100,000 pretty consistently to now up 165,000. I think all the provisional ballots from the I-80 corridor are now coming into the count.

It looks like we'll end between 57.5 and 60% of voting eligible nationally.

In 2008, it was 61.1% of voting eligible nationally. We'll still be down nationally about 2% in turnout.

Not far from what I expected I suppose. Overall it really wasn't much dropoff.

To do with the difference if I am not mistaken.

Big populations that vote blue.

Julie

That's way out of the range of the national average. Even if we think NY would have voted at a much lower rate than 2008 (say, down 7%), it would still have given Obama perhaps another 200,000 vote margin, and that's assuming that the places that didn't vote were slightly more favorable to Romney than NY in general (say 57% Obama rather than 62.5%).

stating the GOTV wasn't as large as 2008 because the Independents weren't happy with PBO's accomplishments. Of course, it had nothing to do with reality as is often the case.

Just as an aside.. it just occured to me that McCain and his sidekick Palin lost Indiana for crissake!



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