get up and do something

The Obama campaign has a secret weapon. It is a tool that could cause this election to be a landslide, but it is a tool that has never functioned well in the hands of democrats. This weapon can be summed up as the Get Out The Vote Machine.

Pollsters have shown that nearly every state is within 10% of an Obama victory. That may be an insurmountable number when we look back at the Republican machine the past two election cycles, but in 2008, that number is very beatable.

Here is my take on the math courtesy of the US census bureau:
Only 47% of voters age 18-24 actually voted in the 2004 presidential election. There are currently 29.5 million citizens between the ages of 18-24. Lets make two simple assumptions that we can play with later. First, lets assume that this age group will vote 60-40 for Obama. Now lets assume that the turnout increases to 55%. These are both modest assumptions given Obama's support amongst college students and given the motivation and organization by the Obama campaign to get this demographic to vote.

These numbers add 470,000 more votes to Obama's column than to McCain's. In Virginia and Indiana, it produces 12000 votes and 9800 votes, respectively, which is a 0.4% gain. Statistically speaking, that is a huge shift for a very small portion of the electorate. If the numbers are expanded to include 18-36 year-olds, the shift more than triples. This is why turning out the vote and getting college students to vote will be so critical.

Another side point about voter turn-out: Pollsters are having trouble gauging how many young voters to include in their models when they conduct polls. They are typically using slightly adjusted models from 2004, making the younger voters under-represented by my assumptions above. With that in mind, every state with a gap of less than 10% is in play.

So make sure everyone you know ages 18-36 is registered and votes. Absentee ballots can be requested online and don't take long to fill out, but voting absentee-in-person or voting early (Georgia) is even easier.

In 2004, Bush won Ohio by 80,000 votes and Nevada by 20,000. If turnout among young voters beats pollsters' expectations, we can also win Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, and Indiana. However, if it is similar to 2004, it can swing the other way very quickly and we will only have ourselves to blame.