On turnout

Timothy McNulty | November 5, 2009

We post the below from Larry Sabato at the UVa Center of Politics -- on turnout in Va and NJ -- as it pertains to discussions of turnout (and GOP wins, and what it means for 2010) generally on Tuesday:

Turnout played a huge role in the outcomes in both NJ and VA, with Republicans showing up in droves and Democrats going fishing, at least to some degree. In Virginia, one result of absentee Democrats was the lowest voter turnout for a gubernatorial election in the state's modern two-party history (1969 to 2009). The 2009 turnout of 39.8 percent of the registered voters was the lowest in forty years. Even with all the population growth since 2005, the absolute voter turnout in 2009 (1.97 million) fell below that of four years ago (2.0 million). And the electorate was barely more than half that of 2008 (3.7 million). Astounding.

. . . Does anybody doubt African-Americans weren't engaged in this week's elections? Here's some proof for remaining doubters, in a sampling of heavily black precincts around Virginia. Even though Creigh Deeds received a larger percentage of the black vote (93 percent) than the previous Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Tim Kaine, in 2005 (90 percent), the turnout was miserable for Deeds--more than 10 full percentage points lower. He received many fewer African-American votes than Kaine, despite near-unanimous backing from blacks who cast a ballot.

(H/t to CQ Politics)