Twenty four hours after the Ohio polls closed, with 98.76% of the precincts reporting, a clear picture of the 2008 election is beginning to emerge. And reality is going to go against the conventional wisdom on a number of fronts.

Ohio had record turnout in 2008. FALSE.
Ohio had a turnout of 71.59% in 2004. In 2008, turnout was a little over 65%. To put this in perspective, Bush/Gore in 2000 had a turnout of 63.6% and Clinton/Dole in 1996 had 67.8%.

Ohio had a record number of votes cast in 2008. FALSE.
There were almost 400,000 fewer votes cast in 2008 compared to 2004. Ohio had 5.6M votes cast in 2004 compared to 5.2M this year.

Residents in Democratic counties were motivated and had a turnout similar to the Republican counties. FALSE.
Turnout in Democratic counties was 62.9% vs. 67% in Republican counties for a gap of 4.1%. This was even worse than the 3.4% gap in 2004.

Obama won Ohio thanks to his large margins in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincy, and the other big cities. FALSE.
Obama expanded his victory margin in the Democratic counties from 38.5% - 61% in 2004 to 36% - 62.6% this year. This was offset, however, by the larger turnout gap described above, especially in Cleveland where turnout was only 58%. These two factors essentially canceled each other out. In the end, Obama's performance in the Democratic counties ran within 10,000 votes of my projections he needed to tie Ohio, not to win it.

McCain's GOTV effort was outperforming Bush's in 2004 in the last week of the campaign. FALSE.
Despite an additional 165,000 registered voters in Republican counties, 100,000 less votes were cast in these counties. Turnout dropped from 72.2% to 67% in these counties. McCain's margin of victory in these counties dropped from Bush's 21% to 14%. In the end, this lower turnout combined with the smaller margin of victory in Republican counties cost McCain 200,000 votes. This essentially was the margin of Obama's victory.

Obama won Ohio in the Republican counties. TRUE. This was absolutely the case and was one of the keys to the election I noted on Sunday.

Rural Counties – This is where the election will be won. More than have of the new registered voters came from Republican counties. If we start to see Obama really closing the gap on Bush's margin of victory in 2004 in the rural counties, this election is over. This basically means Obama went into the heart of Republican counties and got new voters. If you don't see Obama making inroads here, the election is going to be very tight.

In the end, lower turnout and a smaller margin of victory in these counties combined to cost McCain the election. McCain had a very small margin of error in these counties and in the end, he couldn't duplicate the results of 2004 and it cost him the election. A summary spreadsheet of all of this analysis is here.

This post will contain real-time election results for the 2008 Ohio presidential election as well as my projections for the final result. Stay tuned for details.

Full County Projection Method: Projected Obama Victory / (Defeat) Margin

 


Partial County Projection Method: Projected Results

 


Got questions, read the FAQ.

Here is a link to the detailed Ohio Election Projection Spreadsheet which will be updated in real-time as the Ohio Secretary of State releases results. It provides the projected results as well as detailed comparisons to the 2004 election.

I'll be focusing on setting up things to project the results for the Ohio election over the next day but wanted to post a couple of quick thoughts on the Ohio election and results.

If the polls prove out, it could be a very quick night. If not, watch for these items.

1. Turnout – Turnout will be higher in Democratic counties from a percentage perspective. This won't be that big of a deal. Turnout was lower in Democratic counties than Republican counties in 2004 but this was driven by a lot of invalid voter registrations that have since been purged. That means the same number of voters could turn out and it would still result in a higher percentage turnout. Even bringing the turnout up the the level's seen in Republican counties only nets Obama 25,000 votes. This isn't where the election will be won.

2. Rural Counties – This is where the election will be won. More than have of the new registered voters came from Republican counties. If we start to see Obama really closing the gap on Bush's margin of victory in 2004 in the rural counties, this election is over. This basically means Obama went into the heart of Republican counties and got new voters. If you don't see Obama making inroads here, the election is going to be very tight.

3. Provisional Ballots – If Obama's team is talking about provisional ballots, that's a good sign for McCain. Provisional ballots mimicked traditional ballots within 0.1% in 2004. If either side wants to win the election by counting on provisional ballots, it's over.

4. Absentee ballots and early voting – In the past, absentee ballots also mimicked the general election results. This was the first year where early voting was encouraged and the Democrats focused on it extremely hard. This is the big unknown this year and we will have to watch.

I am setting up the infrastructure to support live blogging and projecting the Ohio results at http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com

If the results are too close for the networks to call Ohio based on exit polling, I am going to try to beat them to the punch.

In a previous post, I ran a 2008 vote projection assuming the 2004 turnout percentages and 2004 margin of victories for each county. Using the 2008 registered voter list as a base, all things being equal to 2004, McCain would actually win Ohio by 125,000 votes, which was slightly more than the 119,000 Bush actually won Ohio by in 2004. This is because counties that went for Bush in 2004 actually had a larger increase in registered voters in 2008 than counties that went for Kerry.

At the time I said I would run another projection at the precinct level instead of at the county level. My assumption was that Obama was registering new voters in Democratic friendly precincts in the Bush counties. By running the projections at a precinct level, I expected my projections to narrow considerably.

I have completed my analysis and the results and the exact opposite of what I expected. Running the projections at a precinct level (there are over 11,000 precincts in Ohio) and summing them up increases McCain's margin of victory to over 147,000 votes.

I used the same method as I did at the county level in my previous post. I took the current number of registered voters for each precinct, multiplied it by the turnout factor for that precinct in 2004 and then applied then gave McCain and Obama the same percentage of the vote that went Democratic and Republican in 2004. This netted McCain an additional 22,000 votes over doing the same thing at a county level.

It should be noted that approximately 1% of all precincts in Ohio appear to have been redefined since 2004. In cases where the precinct did not exist in 2004, I applied countywide factors to make the projections.

What this means is that the new voters did not just come in primarily Republican counties. They came from the most Republican precincts in those counties.

Even in Democratic leaning counties, precincts with some of the largest increases in registered voters went Republican. For example, Monclova Township Precinct 11 is in Lucas county, increased by over 1,000 registered voters in 2008. In 2004, Lucas county went for Kerry 61% - 39% but this particular precinct when for Bush 54% - 44%.

The opposite is also true, some of the largest decreases in registered voters came in precincts that lean heavily Democratic.

All of this would appear to be good news for McCain, but obviously the polls don't show this.

This means one of three things are happening:

• Obama went into the heart of the Republican strongholds and found Democratic voters and registered them.

• Voters who voted for Bush in 2004 are crossing over and voting for Obama this year or not voting at all.
  

• The polls are wrong and are assuming a larger turnout of Democratic voters than has occured in the past and will occur this year.

If it's 1, that's bad news for Republicans and Ohio could be blue for a long time.

If it's 2, it will be interesting to see if the voters who switch will stick or not in future elections.

If it's 3, hang on to your hats, it could be an interesting election night.

I've completed my initial projections of Ohio's vote for the 2008 presidential election based on the current registered voter list and past behavior. The bottom line is McCain has some room for deterioration from Bush's 2004 performance. But not much.

I did my preliminary projections at the county level. Hopefully I will be able perform the same analysis at a precinct level to see if there is much of a difference.

To do my preliminary projections, I took the 2008 voter registration counts for each county, applied a turnout factor equal to the turnout for the county in 2004, and then applied the a factor representing the percent of votes Bush got to determine a McCain baseline and a factor representing the percent of votes Kerry got to determine a Obama baseline. I did this for each county and totaled them up for a statewide total.

Using this method, McCain wins Ohio by 125,928 votes. This was a slight improvement over Bush's performance (118,000 votes) because Bush counties actually showed a slightly larger increase in registered voters in 2008 than Kerry counties.

That means, if everything mirrors 2004 (turnout, margin of victory in each county), McCain wins Ohio by a little over 125,000 votes.

But everything remaining the same is highly unlikely, and the things that will change favor Obama. The question is, how much will they change and how much will they eat into the 125,000 votes?

The first factor to consider is turnout. Turnout in Bush counties was 72.29% while turnout in Kerry counties was 68.86%. After the 2004 election, Ohio's voter lists were purged of invalid voters with a significant number coming from the urban counties that favored Kerry. These invalid voters artificially lowered the turnout in Kerry counties to some extent and you would expect higher turnout in 2008. What's unclear is how many of the new voters registered are invalid. It's clear that ACORN has been registering some invalid voters but it's not clear how many really made the actual registration list, etc.

For the purposes of this analysis, I'm going to assume the turnout in the Kerry counties increases to the same level as the Bush counties in 2004. This would require an 5% increase in the number of voters turning out in Kerry counties.

This increase in turnout would net Obama an additional 24,572 votes.

This means that even if Obama raises the turnout in Kerry counties 5%, matching the turnout percentages in the Bush counties, he will still lose Ohio by over 100,000 votes.

Obama will not win Ohio by just increasing turnout in his base counties. He must also eat into Bush's margin of victory.

There are a couple ways he could do this. Bush won his counties in 2004 by an average margin of victory of 20.90%. Kerry won his counties by an average of 16.62%.

If Obama can win the same Kerry counties by 20.90% like Bush won his, he brings the election to within 2,500 votes. Factor in the increased turnout in the Kerry counties and he wins by a little over 20,000.

Likewise, if Obama can reduce McCain's margin of victory in the Bush counties to 16.62%, he brings the election to within 5oo votes. Again, factor in the increased turnout in Kerry counties and he wins by 24,000.

Another option. Increase the turnout in the Kerry counties as stated above and increase his margin of victory by 0.9% in Kerry counties while reducing McCain's by 0.9% in Bush counties.

The result: a 5,849 vote victory for Obama. Is that close enough for you?

In a future post, I would like to perform a similar analysis at the precinct level. Using a county rollup could hide trends in voter registration that I am missing.

I would also like to look at trends in 2000 to 2004 results and see what happens if I project them out into 2008.

The bottom line is something everyone knew. McCain has very little margin for error and can't allow even a 1% deterioration from Bush's margins of victory if he is to win Ohio.

I just completed my party affiliation analysis for the voters who registered in Ohio in 2008.  There were 859,724 new voter registrations in 2008 and there were two big observations. 

There were significantly more independents than normal.  As a ratio, there were more people registering as Democrats than Republicans than we typically see.

	Percent of 2008 Registrations	Percent of 2007 and Prior Registrations
Independent	84%	46%
Democrat	11%	32%
Republican	4%	20%
Other	1%	2%

A more detailed analysis is on my companion blog:  http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/2008/10/party-affiliation-of-ohios-new.html

Voter registration in Ohio closed yesterday and Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Secretary of State, released a new registered voter file compiled at 8:19pm last night.

A quick review shows that there are now 8,162,815 voters registered in Ohio, up 100,000 from two weeks ago. This is up 183,185 voters compared to the 2004 Bush/Gore election, with the majority of the increase coming from counties that went for Bush in 2004. In comparison, the registered voter count increased by almost 450,000 from 2000 to 2004, with the vast majority coming in the Gore counties.

A more detailed analysis is on my companion blog:  http://ohiovoter.blogspot.com/2008/10/ohio-registered-voters-816-million.html

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/

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/

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/

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

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/

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.