McCain, the Base, and Turnout

[roo_ster]

McCain, the Base, and Turnout   [Byron York]

On those vote totals again.  At the moment, Obama has 62.4 million votes, while McCain has 55.4 million.  In 2004, Bush won 62 million votes, and Kerry 59 million.

So if there wasn't this vaunted through-the-roof turnout, what do the numbers say about McCain's supporters?  I'll have to look at this more closely, but if 2004 was, as everyone says, a base election, and Bush got 62 million votes, my guess is that McCain didn't do as well with the Republican base as Bush did.

It appears that finally, on election night, McCain's long-time problems with the GOP base caught up with him. He did a lot to alienate that base back in 2000, and he began this race knowing that he would have to patch things up.  He accomplished some of that, but not all of it.  I can't tell you how many Republicans I met out on the campaign trail who expressed a marked lack of enthusiasm for McCain's candidacy.  Just last week, I met a very loyal Republican in Chillicothe, Ohio who said he felt a "Carter malaise" after McCain won the GOP nomination — and he wasn't re-energized until McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.  So from Super Tuesday through the Republican convention, this normally active Republican sat on his hands.

In this sense, I don't think the choice of Palin hurt McCain.  His problem was that he had to use a decision as momentous as his choice of vice president to shore up the support of a group, the GOP base, whose support he should have already had.  At the end of August, McCain was already in a hole with the base, and he never got completely out.  Things just catch up with you.

Yep, no matter how much false-enthusiasm some of the talk-radio program guys put forth, the Republican base was never really sewn up by McCain.  McCain kicked evangelicals in the jimmy in 2000 has contributed to two losses: 2000 Rep primary and 2008 general.

All this talk about giving the fundies a boot in the *expletive deleted*ss is a sure formula to loser status for the foreseeable future.

[MicroBalrog]

WHERE IS YOUR ELECTABILITY NOW?

[seeker_two]

In this sense, I don't think the choice of Palin hurt McCain.

If it wasn't for Palin, McCain wouldn't have gotten half of the votes he did....

...too bad she'll drown on his self-torpedoed political ship.....

....McCain just needs to get a glass of warm milk, go back to bed, and let his wife arrange for his (political career) hospice care... 

[Monkeyleg]

How can anyone possibly know how many of the Bush or McCain voters are "the base?" A goodly number of the voters are independents who went for Bush or McCain, and we have no way of quantifying them.

I firmly believe that choosing Palin helped McCain with "the base." The polls bear it out, as do the crowds.

[French G.]

Well if we believe the stat that there are 80 million gun owners in this country then WTH? How many are eligible to own a gun but not eligible to vote? Only 46 million total McCain votes, not good. The democratic lay low on guns thing worked so well it may convince them  that they can pull some stupid stuff in the first term.

[Pb]

Also the media did a great job in hammering the message the obama was bound to win, no matter what.  That could have hurt turnout of the base.