Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Turnout today lower than expected

North Carolina's elections director is now predicting a lower-than-expected turnout, meaning more voters cast absentee and early ballots than actually voted today.
After talking to elections officials in about 60 of the 100 N.C. counties, Gary Bartlett, N.C. elections director, expected turnout to be at about 66 percent of registered voters, less than the predicted 70 percent.
Bartlett said he didn't know why turnout was less than expected. It would be easy to blame the rain, but lines were strong in the Triangle when rain was pouring today, he pointed out.
We have two theories:
Theory No. 1: So many people, pundits and polls were predicting an Obama victory that people who hadn't already voted figured their vote didn't matter.
Theory No. 2: The last week of near continuous robocalls, TV commercials that became a contest in negativity, daily flyers attempting to besmirch other candidates probably all combined to just make some voters say, "Ugh! A plague on both your houses."

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