Reply #12: Turnout at the caucus I attended in Kansas, one of 3 in our county, [View All]

[tblue37]

was gigantic, even though we had to stand in line freezing rain and high winds for about 30 minutes to get in (because the lines were so very long!). Some unlucky people who came at a different time than I did had to stand in line for to OVER AN HOUR. Before last night they had changed our caucus site. Good thing, too, since we ended up with more than double what the original site would hold. (There were over 2200 at our site.) Another site had to close because the fire marshal said it exceeded its limit, so they had to open another satellite site for all the people who were still arriving within the time limit.

Our caucus gave 9 delegates to Obama, 2 to Hillary. Hillary got 385 total of the 2200+. Four stayed with Edwards after the realignment, and 7 stayed with Kucinich. All the rest of the nearly 2000 went to Obama. The turnout was fueled by people who came out specifically to vote for Obama--and an unusual number of them were first-time voters who registered at the door. An awful lot of them were young people.

Obama could do what Jesse Ventura did in Minnesota--bring so many new voters to the polls that he could sweep the election--if we are smart enough not to ignore the power of what is clearly momentum. And of course Kansas has been a red state for a long time, but the Obama turnout swamped the place. I guarantee the Republicans won't put up such numbers. Howard Dean also said on TV last night that the Dem turnout was ranging from 2 to 1 to 4 to 1 greater than the Republican turnout.