Interesting Comment by Dem Pollster Mark Mellmann re Repug Turn Out:

[KoKo]

(Wonder what Mellman means by GOP needs something more to turn back this (Democratic) wave? hmmm...

Mark Mellman...."72 Hours to Victory? Maybe Not..

-snip-

How likely is a 20 percent increase in turnout based on a GOTV effort? The best serious academic estimate is that all the GOTV work in the presidential campaign of 2004 increased turnout not by 20 percent, but by about 3 percent.

Experiments on turnout by Alan Gerber and Donald Green suggest that the most effective means of increasing turnout raise it by less than 10 percent — and that’s for people who get canvassed in person. None of this is to suggest that GOTV efforts are not valuable. When 2000 or 200 votes decide an election there is no question that GOTV efforts can make all the difference in the world. But again, that is simply not the case that is being argued by GOP operatives.

Can’t micro-targeting help them achieve spectacular successes? Anyone who has ever modeled data knows there is much more salesmanship than science in Republican claims about these efforts. Our firm and others on the Democratic side have been using these models for half a dozen years or more and we know they can make our efforts much more efficient; expand our GOTV and persuasion universes; and provide message guidance. So when races are otherwise marginal, the lift models provide can make all the difference between winning and losing. But no model is going to turn what would otherwise be a 5-point loss into a victory.

But didn’t the GOP prove its efforts were much more effective than the Democrats’ in 2004? No. Check the data. In Ohio’s base Democratic precincts turnout was 8.2 points higher than it had been in 2000. In base Republican precincts, turnout increased by a slightly lesser 6.1 points. Winning a state is not the same as doing a better job on turnout.

As important as turnout and GOTV efforts can be, the GOP needs to find something more to hold back this wave.

http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/Pollsters/MarkMellman/110106.html

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982, including Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.

[electropop]

1. Suppression of the opposition voters is not the same as turnout.

But it works, if you have no morals whatsoever.

[Awsi Dooger]

2. There are several problems with that comment

I respect Mark Mellman tremendously but I'm a stickler for situational comparisons that aren't necessarily parallel.

First of all, Ohio is 2000 was not fully contested by Al Gore. He pulled out early, about a month to go due to bad polling, assuming the state was lost. TV ads were yanked, and Gore or Lieberman did not visit the state. The GOTV efforts were also diminished somewhat, or at least not emphasized and fortified as they would have been if the state had been considered competitive and vital, as in 2004. The GOP continued to campaign in Ohio.

Remember, there was no Ohio gov race in 2000 and the DeWine senate race was a joke, with DeWine winning something like 60-36. So there was no natural pull to get Democrats to the polls.

Also, the Ohio economy declined dramatically between 2000 and 2004. The downturn no doubt impacted Democratic-leaning types more than higher income voters so it's understandable voters in base Democratic precincts would be more motivated than in 2000, whether or not the turnout effort improved.

On the other hand, it' also true the Democratic precincts are where the lines were long, and often fewer voting machines than in 2000. Pre-election suppression techniques also. That 8.2 would have been higher minus Blackwell.