Cell phone user MYTH.

[mzmolly]

I bought it when I supported Dean and again when I supported Kerry. I won't fall for that crap again. :(

[Pig_Latin_Lover]

1. I think it was true

It was true, but I think the young voters didn't show up, or had their votes thrown out.

I know I was never polled and I was one of them.

[muchacho]

3. yep

19-25 voters were down from 2000. i hope they're happy when they can't find a or or get drafted.

[BurtWorm]

18. They had their votes thrown out, I believe.

We were "beaten" by the disenfranchisement party.

[dbt]

2. And then there's the myth of the Exit Polls.

Damned if I didn't lose the farm on that one!

:grr:
dbt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. I Tried To Warn Folks That Polls Were Essentially Sound...

I tried to tell folks the polls would be vindicated in the end....


The polls showed a close race and that's what we had....

A close race that didn't benefit us....


I am literally drained....


I promised myself after the heartbreak of 2000 I would never make an emotional investment ...I broke that promise to myself and I feel awful....

[Awsi Dooger]

11. National polls are always reliable

State polls suck. I tried to emphasize that all year, to no avail. Look at Hawaii and New Jersey and Colorado and on and on regarding the state polls. Senate and gov races also, way off.

Did you see the party ID figures? 37-37-26. Devastating. The GOP had 40+% in many states, including both Florida and Ohio. Only independents kept us close. I posted a thread regarding that hours ago.

Oh, and here is a crack up: 30% of West Virginia Democrats voted for Bush, including 25% who classified themselves as liberal.

I need some sleep. You know, a 537 vote deficit sounds pretty good right now, compared to 136,000.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. Well

I am a political scientist by training... I might not be Norm Ornstein but I always expected a tight race...


We went into this race with obvious disadvantages. Some of us pointed out these disadvantages until we got shouted down and called freepers...

As a political scientist I noted

-the last time a non southern Democrat won the White House was 1960....

-even having a southern Dem on top of the ticket is no guarantee of success-see 2000....

-by ceding the south and the mountain states the Democrats needed an inside straight to win the Electoral College... Inside straights are rare....

-the Electoral Map is daunting when you start with nearly twenty states and 200 Electoral College votes in the Republican's pocket...


Kerry ran a great race... He deserves props .... He used Bush* as a punching bag in the first debate and won decisively the second and third ... It just wasn't enough...

I see some saying this election was a referendum on gay rights... A majority (I believe 65%) favored gay marriage or civil unions... Unfortnately Bush got a substantial portion of that vote...


Where do we go from here?

[Awsi Dooger]

29. I'm going to sleep

But first...

A couple more trends that held up:

* Senator not the ideal launching point, compared to governor

* If Bush wins, now 10 of 11 incumbents since 1900 have been re-elected if their party has been in power only one term. A natural benefit of a doubt. Only Carter with a 39% approval was ousted in that spot.

Obviously we need more states in play. Hell, entire regions. Don't ask me how. Apparently churches and guns are everywhere. After scanning state by state exit polls, the party ID realities made me much more concerned that blue states will slip away, than we can recover red areas. The sick part about tonight is so few states we lost even demonstrated a mild move in our favor, compared to the national average. Maybe Virginia. Colorado, by about 3 points. That's about it.

I think we need less emphasis on money, and more on finding a brilliant party leader who isolates the best candidates and forces the states and party to go along. Free for all primaries blow.

It's more and more clear our fate resides with women, primarily married white women. White males are locked at about 63-36 GOP but white women are influenced. Bush won just enough of them via fear.

At the presidential level, I'm convinced we underrate likeability to our own peril. That was reason for my favoritism of Edwards over Kerry. The exit polls had Kerry with 48% favorable ratings and 50% unfavorable, not enough to oust an incumbent. Looks like Kerry only managed about 55-56% of the late undecideds, meaning the final three days.

[RafterMan]

30. From here?

Given your points, do you think it's wise to continue allowing Iowa and New Hampshire to choose the nominee? The Dem candidate cannot afford to be tone deaf to the south and west's sensibilities.

Clinton was sort of an accident and maybe the North responded more to Carter's micromanaging engineer side than to his southern charm.

[BurtWorm]

19. Don't give up. The polls probably were right. Don't trust the *counting*

Think about it.

[Cooley Hurd]

5. Where was the 18-29 vote?

Why the fuck didn't they GET OUT AND VOTE????:grr:

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. We Were Misled...

but it was a perfectly valid assumption...

[mzmolly]

7. Same assumption I made in the Dean campaign.

I'm pushing 40 and I'll never again rely on the young to make a difference.

I am disgusted.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. It's Not Like We Thought Young People Would Decide The Election...

We just expected them to give us a boost...


They didn't even give us that...

[mzmolly]

12. I thought they'd be the difference. I think many banked on it.

Dean was supposed to be instrumental in bringing them to the polls, but twice they didn't show in the numbers expected.

They have so much at stake too.

[RafterMan]

15. Hey DSB

Do you have numbers?

I'd really like to see 2004 vs 2000 on this issue. In a way, I hope you're right that they didn't show up. If they did, then the general population is even worse off than I could imagine.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

22. I Haven't Slept Much In Days...

but the data suggests young people voted at or below their 2000 levels...


I believe we we were correct that a massive turnout would favor us...


However the massive turnout never materialized....


Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

[RafterMan]

13. I didn't see the Kerry campaign as targeting young voters

They went toe-to-toe for the mainstream voting population.

I don't think they relied on young voters as anything but margin-padding.

[mzmolly]

16. I don't think the campaign did, but I think our surrogates like Moveon

did so.

We should have organized the GOTV effort in one central location. Instead we had a number of disorganized efforts not coordinated with the other.

I volunteered for Moveon, and they were more concerned that we showed up and worked for them then that we worked at all. They had my husband stand outside a voting place to take ... so far away that he could not be seen by the people he was supposed to check in.

I found myself wondering what they were trying to accomplish and thinking we should be driving people to the polls instead.

[RafterMan]

25. Right -- that threw me for a loop

I thought that was the lesson of Kerry vs. Dean in Iowa -- pros under centralized command take the prize over well-meaning newbies.

I wish someone would write a book on this stuff.

[ScreamingMeemie]

8. They. Did. I saw them with my own eyes.

Shame on us for afixing blame, when the ones to blame are the ones attempting a theft right this very minute.

[Democat]

9. How much time and money was invested in getting young people out?

And they didn't fucking show. Disgusting! :(

[RafterMan]

14. So, how much?

The targeting seemed implied, but not particularly active...

[Julien Sorel]

21. Puffy Combs, the Eminem video,

the Rock The Vote stuff -- the attention was there. These people were just too damned apathetic to understand the stakes.

[kayell]

20. Bull Shit. Their votes were STOLEN.

[Paxdora]

26. The votes were STOLEN!

and I'll keep shouting that truth until every DUer understands it and stops their effing WHINING!

WE WUZ ROBBED by the scumbag despots who will stop at NOTHING to keep their evil power!

[Julien Sorel]

23. All of that stuff was a myth.

The "new voters' who would come out of the woodworks, all that stuff. It almost always is. Whenever I see that stuff, it's just whistling past the graveyard. The only new paradigm that came out of the Dean campaign that held up was the fundraising part.

[sbj405]

24. 28 y/o weighing in

Let me start by saying I've never missed an election since I've been of voting age. Any election - city council included.

I spent most of yesterday knocking and dragging for MoveOn in PA. I was teamed up with 3 other under 30s. There was an America Votes team of 5 others working the same neighborhood. We got a number of yoiunger voters to the polls. A great many seemed to have been dragged by their parents (good for them!). Many of my friends have been working hard - phonebanking, registering, etc.

My experience is that young people will register to vote if you hand them the form and hand it in for them. Getting them to the polls is perhaps the challenge that we didn't live up to.

[Paxdora]

27. The votes were STOLEN!

and I'll keep shouting that truth until every DUer understands it and stops their effing WHINING!

WE WUZ ROBBED by the scumbag despots who will stop at NOTHING to keep their evil power!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

28. I Don't Think You Can Steal 3,000,000 Votes...

And the Kerry people would be hollering to high heaven if it was true...

[TexasSissy]

31. The pop. vote diff. is less than 2 million. Wheredja get 3 million #?

[RafterMan]

32. Difference

Bush 58,150,001
Kerry 54,612,411

= 3537590

from nytimes.com

If your source says better, please share.