Great news for Kerry!
Democrat registration on the rise
By Ford Fessenden
The New York Times
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.
The The New York Times' analysis of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio -- primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods -- new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas.
A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: In the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.
Comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, but similar registration drives have been mounted in them, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.
"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."
Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson declined to comment on the Times' findings and said she did not believe that Republicans were lagging in the registration battle. "We're very confident that we have a ground game that's as good as the Democrats', and better," she said.
The precise effect of the swell in registration is difficult to predict because there isn't a reliable gauge of how many of these new voters will vote. Some experts, though, say that the spike has not been accurately captured by political polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states. |
