While smaller outfits have been collecting information about the Democrats' increasing voter registration advantage in the nation's swing states, the story hasn't caught a ton of attention in the mainstream media. But today, the Washington Post printed the most comprehensive recap of the trend to date, noting that the swelling voter rolls have a decidedly blue tint:
As the deadline for voter registration arrives today in many states, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is poised to benefit from a wave of newcomers to the rolls in key states in numbers that far outweigh any gains made by Republicans.
In the past year, the rolls have expanded by about 4 million voters in a dozen key states -- 11 Obama targets that were carried by George W. Bush in 2004 (Ohio, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico) plus Pennsylvania, the largest state carried by Sen. John F. Kerry that Sen. John McCain is targeting.
The Post provides some eye-popping specifics: In Florida, Democratic registration gains this year are more than double those made by Republicans; in Colorado and Nevada the ratio is 4 to 1; in North Carolina it's 6 to 1; in Pennsylvania, 474,000 Democrats have been added to the rolls this year while the GOP has actually lost 38,000 voters; of the 310,000 new voters in Virginia, which has a non-partisan system, a disproportionate share live in Democratic strongholds. And once elections offices process the tens of thousands of registrations still funneling in -- most state's registration deadlines are today or tomorrow -- the numbers will continue to grow.
The key, though, is turnout. The Obama campaign predicts that 80 percent of the voters it is registering will support the Democrat, and that 75 percent will turn out. That might be overenthusiastic, but the party's investment on database technology (a tactic once dominated by Republicans) will surely help:
[Harold] Ickes, a Democratic media consultant and former Clinton adviser, has spent four years and $15 million building Catalist, a database that scores 200 million Americans according to their likelihood to vote for party candidates. Illinois Senator Obama, 47, is one of his biggest clients.
"We have lost because we did not have the technical capability of finding voters that we needed to find and get them out to vote,'' Ickes said. [...]
This year, with polls again showing a tight presidential campaign, Catalist may enable Democrats to level the playing field by allowing Obama and the party's down-ticket candidates to focus on voters who will support them and ignore those who won't, he said.
"Not every one is going to pan out, but a relatively high percentage is going to pan out compared to just going in to a geographic area and knocking on every door and phoning every home,'' Ickes said.
If you've read our reports on the potential of increased voter turmout among underrepresented communities, you know how crucial these voters could be.
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