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Bush/Kerry 2004: Get Out the Vote

Posted by Ohio Voter on Monday, September 29, 2008 7:52:28 PM

By the time Nov 2, 2004 came along, the Democratic party had registered almost 400,000 additional voters in the 16 Ohio counties that voted for Gore in 2000. The key now, was to get them to the polls. And to the polls they came. By the time the votes were counted, John Kerry had amassed over 550,000 more votes than Al Gore had in 2000. Team Kerry was confident. After all, Al Gore had lost Ohio by only 200,000 votes in 2000. They had 350,000 additional votes in hand.

Unknown or unappreciated by the Democrats however, was the GOTV effort by the GOP that was quietly going on in the rural areas throughout Ohio. While the Kerry supporters were diligently registering more voters in their strongholds, the Bush team was putting a GOTV infrastructure in place to drive turnout higher among their existing voters. In 2000, the turnout in the Bush counties came in at 64%. In 2004, this increased to 72%. This translated into over 500,000 more votes for George Bush than he got in 2000. In the end, this was enough.

When the dust settled, George Bush had won Ohio again, this time by a slim 118,601 votes. One pro-Gore county switched to Bush (Clark) and one pro-Bush county switched to Kerry (Stark). The other 86 counties remained the same, except they had longer lines at the voting booths.

Next up, I will start to begin my analysis of the most recent voter registration numbers for Ohio and analyze what they may mean for Ohio in 2008.


I will also be cross posting these posts on my blogspot site as I can track visitors better there:  http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/

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Bush/Kerry 2004: Register Those Voters

Posted by Ohio Voter on Saturday, September 27, 2008 7:51:28 PM

In my previous post on the subject, I explained how in the 2000 election, Gore ran up a large vote advantage in 16 largely metropolitan counties and then Bush ran up an even larger vote advantage in the remaining 72 largely rural Ohio counties, giving the state of Ohio to Bush.

In 2004, team Kerry clearly understood the dynamics of the state of Ohio. They ran the numbers and felt they could easily pull an additional 100,000 - 200,000 votes from the metropolitan areas Gore won in 2000. If they could do this and eat into Bush's lead in the rural counties, Ohio would turn blue.

The first step in this plan was to register more voters, and register they did. By November 2004, Ohio's registered voters increased by 450,000. The remarkable thing about this was that almost 400,000 of this increase came from 16 counties. Yes, the 16 counties that Gore won in 2000.

In my next post, we'll look at how Gore used this increase in registered voters to his advantage and how Bush counteracted its impact.


I will also be cross posting these posts on my blogspot site as I can track visitors better there:  http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/

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Bush/Gore 2000: The Results

Posted by Ohio Voter on Thursday, September 25, 2008 4:30:17 PM
In my previous post, I explained how even though Ohio has traditionally been very close from total votes perspective, when you break down the vote results by region, Ohio is very similar to the US – the relatively few urban areas (I.e. Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus) trend Democratic while the many less populated areas trend Republican.

The results of the Bush/Gore 2000 election held true to form. Gore ran up a 315,145 vote advantage in 16 counties, with the Cleveland (165,000) and Toledo (35,000) metropolitan areas accounting for over half of the total. Bush then won the remaining 72 counties by a net of 480,164 votes with an average win of 6,600 votes in each county. This was enough for Bush to carry Ohio in 2000 by what was then considered a close 165,019 votes. Overall, Bush totaled 2,351,209 votes to Gore's 2,186,190.

With 7.5M registered voters, the turnout in the 2000 election sat at 62%. The registered voters were split fairly evenly, with 3.8M registered voters in “Bush” counties and 3.7M voters in “Gore” counties.

In my next post, we'll take a look at the leadup to the 2004 Bush/Kerry election.


I will also be cross posting these posts on my blogspot site as I can track visitors better there:  http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/
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Ohio Registered Voters: 8 Million and Counting

Posted by Ohio Voter on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 1:12:43 PM

For details, see my primary post at http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/2008/09/ohio-registered-voters-8-million-and.html


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Bush/Gore 2000: An Ohio Primer

Posted by Ohio Voter on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 11:24:10 AM
Ohio has been a key battleground state in the last several presidential elections.  This has caused many outside of the state to refer to the state as a purple state that could go either Republican Red or Democratic Blue.  This often leads to the misperception that support for the two parties is uniformly close throughout the state.  This is false.

Ohio is made up of 88 counties, and in reality, a county-wide map of Ohio mimics the statewide map of the US.  Counties in or near the large metropolitan areas of Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo lean largely Democratic while the numerous rural counties lean Republican.  The two notable exceptions are Hamilton county,  near Cincinnati, which leans Republican and Athens county, a rural county which is the home of the liberal Ohio University, which leans Democratic.

The strategy for the Democratic party is to run up the vote totals in the few metropolitan counties and then hang on as the rural counties slowly chip away at their cushion.  The strategy for the Republicans is basically the opposite.

In my next post, I will review the results of the Bush/Gore 2000 election and show how this strategy manifests itself in the county-by-county vote totals.

I will also be cross posting these posts on my blogspot site as I can track visitors better there:  http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/

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Analyzing the Ohio Electorate

Posted by Ohio Voter on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:20:40 PM
This will be the first of several posts summarizing my analysis of the 2008 Presidential race in the state of Ohio.  To truly understand the dynamics and changing environment, it is critical to review the results of the 2000 Bush/Gore and 2004 Bush/Kerry elections.  These results provide a baseline for understanding the 2008 landscape.  They will also provide insight into the potential impact of the new voter registrations that have occurred since 2004.

Over the next several weeks, I shall be documenting this analysis through a series of posts:
  •   Bush/Gore 2000:  An Ohio Primer
  •   Bush/Gore 2000:  The Results
  •   Bush/Kerry 2004:  Register Those Voters
  •   Bush/Kerry 2004:  Get Out the Vote
  •   2008 Ohio Political Environment
  •   2008 Voter Registration Analysis

All of this will culminate on Election Night where I will attempt to call Ohio based on the actual county results prior to the networks.  And all without exit poll data!

I was able to do so in 2004, and if it's close, I expect to be able to do so again.  In fact, in 2004, I remember laughing as Susan Estrich was spouting off on Fox News that Kerry was about to make a comeback in Ohio – just as soon as the Cleveland returns would start to come in.  Unfortunately for her, I was showing that Kerry would need an impossible 80% of the Cleveland vote to even make it close.  An hour later, her colleagues told her the same thing when they called Ohio for Bush.  I smiled and went to sleep vindicated.

Over the next several posts, I'll explain the nature of the Ohio political landscape and my analysis of elections past, present, and future.

All data used in this analysis was obtained from the Ohio Secretary of States website at http://www.sos.state.oh.us.
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