Everyone is focusing on the March 4th contests in Ohio and Texas, but there are contests in Rhode Island and Vermont that day as well. Vermont is probably a safe bet to go to Obama, but polling has shown Hillary Clinton ahead in Rhode Island. Yet, I don’t know if the pollsters are accounting for this:
In the last year, more than 43,000 new voters registered in Rhode Island, including about 21,000 who signed up in the four months before the Feb. 2 deadline, according to a Providence Journal analysis. That’s compared to about 12,400 new voters who registered in the four months before the 2004 state presidential primary cycle.
About 6,800 of the voters who registered in the last four months are Democrats, 1,900 are Republicans and 12,000 are independents, who can vote in either party’s primary.
The new voters this year are also young voters. About 20,000 are between the ages of 18 and 29, the Journal reported.
Twenty-one thousand new voters registered in the last four months, and 20,000 young voters over the last year. Just looking at the Virginia Exit Polls, Obama carried the 17-29 vote by a 52% spread (76%-24%).
And look at the differential registration by party. Democrats are signing up at a better than three-to-one ratio over Republicans. We’re right on the cusp of a realigning election…we just need a transformative candidate that fits with the national mood and we’re there. The latest Gallup Poll, shows “only 41% of adults likely to vote this November say they would support the Republican candidate running in their congressional district. Fifty-five percent say they would vote for the Democratic candidate.” That is landslide territory, but it won’t turn out that way if the Democratic nominee has negative approval ratings all over the country.
