Voter Turnout for 2004 Highest Since 1968

The thing I heard most often on election day 2004 was that “high voter turnout” meant that voters wanted change.

Deep divisions over the war in Iraq and intense voter registration drives pushed the 2004 presidential election turnout to 60.7 percent, the highest level since 1968, the Center for the Study of the American Electorate said Friday.

In 1968, when Republican Richard Nixon beat Democrat Hubert Humphrey, 61.9 percent of those eligible cast ballots. Turnout stayed below 60 percent during the eight presidential elections in between.

Turnout last year rose by 6.4 percentage points over 2000, the biggest election-to-election increase since 1952. That year, voter turnout rose 10.1 percentage points over 1948, the nonpartisan group said.

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7 Responses to "Voter Turnout for 2004 Highest Since 1968"

Ghost Dansing says:

January 15, 2005 at 9:35 am

Indeed, the November vote was an affirmation to continue the course of failure wrought by an incompetent administation, by a narrow margin. The Republicans literally “scared up” the people that hadn’t a clue about the state of foreign and domestic policies, but were petrified of the notion that gays were getting married in churches, and the government might have to honor it like heterosexual marriages. The Republican Party has discovered the least common denominator, and exploits it well. LINK
Sister Toldjah says:

January 15, 2005 at 9:40 am

The bitter pill is an awfully hard one to swallow eh, Ghost?
CavalierX says:

January 15, 2005 at 3:35 pm

Personally, Ghost, I hope the Democrats just keep right on repeating that pathetic whining rant of yours. It will guarantee they’ll never hold power again in my lifetime. Voters just LOVE being told that he decisions they’ve made were “really” based on ignorance, stupidity and fear! They just eat that stuff up, believe me. Keep up the good work!
Ghost Dansing says:

January 15, 2005 at 7:50 pm

Oh… the turkey’s are comming home to roost. The Republicans won’t be able to simply deny failure forever.

Indeed, CavalierX… the Republicans do count on the psychosocial phenomenon of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance theory proposes that people often do not resolve the conflict between a belief and conflicting facts by modifying their beliefs to suit the evidence.

The Republicans have been depending on simple denial mechanisms for a long time, but the facts are catching up and becoming increasingly undeniable.

There are now, and will be dire consequences for the misleadership and miscalulations of this Republican administration. It is already becoming painfully obvious to the American People.

So far, 20,000 Iraqis have died. Some 1,350 U.S. troops have been killed and 10,000 have been wounded. The U.S. has spent $100 billion, and has 150,000 soldiers in the field.

While Bush promised peace and security, Iraq seems to grow more violently chaotic by the day as the Jan. 30 election draws near.

As they contemplate this fiasco, Americans must also finally confront the bitter truth that Saddam had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Except, that is, for people like Vice-President Dick Cheney, who asserted “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” Or of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who warned of “a mushroom cloud.”

The Democrats may have lost the election, but they are not living in a delusion… and the Republicans are running out of others to blame, but themselves. Each who cast a vote for Dubya shares responsbility for what is to come. This is not a football game.. lives are at stake, and they are being squandered by incompetence.
Sister Toldjah says:

January 15, 2005 at 8:00 pm

The only thing “becoming obvious”, Ghost, is your inability to grasp the simple fact that the American people voted in overwhelming numbers to re-elect a president you despise over someone they really didn’t know and really didn’t WANT to get to know. They’re not stupid and your assumption that the wool has been pulled over their eyes is insulting.
Ghost Dansing says:

January 15, 2005 at 8:34 pm

So, you’re pleased with how things are going in Iraq? You’re happy with the massive deficit? You’re happy that the United States is in hoc to Japan and China up to its ears, the dollar is declining, jobs are migrating overseas, and the borders aren’t being secured.. in fact the flow of illegal immigrants is increasing because the White House was talking about legalizing all the illegals?

It doesn’t bother you that Dubya claimed an imminent threat from Iraqi WMD in order to justify preemptive war against Iraq. It doesn’t bother you that the CIA NEVER told the White House that there was an imminent treat from Iraq? It doesn’t bother you that the Republican administration painted the war a cake-walk… we would be greeted as liberators? It doesn’t bother you that this Republican administration has been WRONG on every single reason and prediction on Iraq? And now, it doesn’t bother you that the National Intelligence Council has indicated that Iraq will become the new breeder-reactor for international terrorists, much as Afghanistan was during the Soviet occupation? Everything that every critic of Dubya’s Iraq policy has ever predicted has and is coming true in spades.

That is incompetence. And insulted or not, if you voted for Dubya, you share the blame.. because the evidence was already mounting long before the election.

Bush can dissemble all he wants about the reasons for war, but the fact remains: He sold the American people on a quick, clean war of necessity. What they got instead was a dirty, protracted war of convenience that day by day is bleeding the American people of both the blood of their sons and daughters and the money from their billfolds.

It really doesn’t matter at this point if you were deceived or not. The damage has already been done.. get ready for about thirty years of “I told ‘ya so”.
Sister Toldjah says:

January 15, 2005 at 8:37 pm

Ghost, this is the final post in this thread. I have asked you several times to post your long rants at your own blog. Your comments here don’t have to be two miles long.

As far as how to answer your questions, all you have to do is READ what I post here on a day to day basis to know how I feel about what’s going on in Iraq. If you haven’t figured it out by now, you’re not reading too closely – or perhaps you’re engaged in a bit of “selective” reading. Not surprising.

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