Minorities for Macaca

The New York Times campaign blog, The Caucus, offered up an analysis of a new report issued by Project Vote and focused on youth voter turnout, particularly minority youth.

The 24-page analysis highlighted the poor turnout of youth voters — those ages 18 to 29 made up about 20 percent of the eligible voting population but only 10 percent of voters.

The report also touches on how non-Hispanic blacks trailed non-Hispanic whites in both eligible voter registration (61 percent to 71 percent) and actual voting (41 percent to 52 percent).

The report also claims an additional 7.8 million ballots would have been cast in the 2006 general elections if all eligible minorities had voted at the rate of non-Hispanic whites.

Prompting Times blogger, Ariel Alexovich to ask:

Could those votes have made a difference? Hard to say, but it might be worth noting that Republican George Allen lost the 2006 Virginia Senate race to Democrat Jim Webb by a little more than 8,300 votes.

Is Alexovich suggesting that if more minority youth voters turned out in Virginia, they would have trended towards the racist?

This video never gets old.

That’s just silly.

Of all the races last year, this is the last one to draw that conclusion. If anything, it would have widened the deficit for Allen; perhaps the difference being Allen would not have held out for two days before conceding the race. (I think Jim Webb was already moving in furniture by that time.)

Comments

October 6, 2008