Fewer People Voted in 2008 Than in 2004

Remember all the excitement about the "new and youth" voters who were being registered in record numbers? They didn't show up. Ed Morrissey tells us that in fact fewer people cast votes for president this year than did in 2004:

This morning, after having absorbed the substantial victory of Barack Obama, I noticed a couple of interesting items in the data. Barack Obama certainly won this race, but he won it with just a little more votes than George Bush won in his re-election bid, and the turnout models came up short.

In 2004, Bush beat John Kerry by winning 62.04 million votes. In 2008, Obama won 62.443 million, a gain of only 400,000. In 2004, Kerry garnered 59.028 million votes; John McCain only got 55.386 million. That means this election saw 3.24 million fewer votes than four years ago. Far from being more energized, the nation appeared to be more apathetic.

Using these numbers, we can see that Barack Obama succeeded in turning out his base much more effectively than McCain did his. How do we know that it’s a base turnout rather than a tsunami of opinion to Democrats? For one thing, Dems didn’t pick up a boatload of new seats in the House, and they may underperform expectations yet in the Senate. They did gain some strength with independents, but only gaining between 11-20 seats in the House tells us that they found votes in districts they already control, more than finding converts.

While Obama's true believers were probably more excited and motivated than Kerry's true believers, the overall electorate was not more excited or motivated to vote in this contest. I suspect that had the GOP nominated a conservative candidate this year's numbers would have exceeded 2004 because Republicans would have been more motivated to turn out. I think when all the analysis is done there will certainly be Republicans who crossed over to vote for Obama, but we'll also find a substantial percentage of conservatives decided to sit this one out.

Either that or they voted "present".