Today at 6:15 a.m. I arrived at my local polling place to hand out voter guides. I live in an overwhelmingly Republican area. The lines were really long and stayed constant until about 10:00 a.m. when they thinned out a bit. The people were mostly friendly, although I did get three nasty people who wanted me to know that they did not like the Bush-Cheney sticker on my shirt. I smiled and refused to argue with them and simply told them to "stop the hate." No joke. I really did. That didn't stop the nastiest woman from sniping at me, but her husband did. I think she embarrassed the poor fella. Maybe he was a Bush supporter. There were lots of kids and babies in line with their moms. Every pregnant woman I talked to was a Bush voter and the majority of women there were. I was in a Republican precinct, after all. Most of the voters, Democrats and Republicans alike, were pleasant and it was a great experience.
Lorie, what you report is definitely fitting the pattern that I commented on over at Brainster's. It looks like turnout was way up in the Red States--by an incredible 17% as compared to the Blue States, where turnout climbed only 6%. This appears to be why the President won the popular vote by a large margin, but didn't add much to his electoral vote majority.
Posted by: Brainster | Wednesday, November 03, 2004 at 08:56 PM