Henry Louis Gomez at Babalu Blog crunches the numbers behind Obama’s win in Miami:
I was looking at some of the elections data for my ongoing series about the shift and found that John McCain only garnered 544 fewer votes in Miami-Dade County than George W. Bush did in 2004.
It wasn’t so much that people shifted to the Democrat, it’s that the Democrats recruited a bunch of new voters. We knew this already but not the extent of it. Obama garnered 90,099 more votes than Kerry did.
Look for the Dems to spend the next four years telling you that this past election was a definitive sea change.
Also look to this election for the Dems, who previously thought that the Electoral College was outdated and obsolete, to now suddenly trumpet Obama’s electoral blowout as a mandate, and ignore the 7% popular vote spread.
It wasn’t so much that people shifted to the Democrat, it’s that the Democrats recruited a bunch of new voters.
And those “new voters” may never cast another vote in their lives. The increase in registered voters was more Obama driven rather than excitement about Democrats.
We saw yesterday how motivated those new voters were yesterday in the Georgia Senate race. No black dude, no interest.