The Skinny

A couple of weeks ago, we ventured out to Nevada to see what a real presidential campaign looks like. We were struck by the massive voter registration drive in the state, and Democrats 100,000 net gain in a state with just 1.3 million registered voters. George Bush narrowly carried the state in 2004, but we, using some broken unscientific math, tried to project how the new voter turnout may affect the 2008 results, and put the state in Barack Obama’s column. So how did we do? Well, we admittedly made some assumptions, but it looks like we underestimated the Obama tide in the Silver State. We assumed there would be 935,753 voters casting ballots (that assumed the same 77.5 percent turn out as 2004). As it turned out, the final number is going to be more than 983,000. We calculated a 49,000-vote margin for Obama. The final margin was more than 120,000. It just shows that in Nevada, like many other states, Obama not only lured new voters to the polls, but he performed much better among more seasoned voters than John Kerry did in 2004. Obama not only won a decisive victory in Washoe County, home of Reno, which Bush won narrowly in 2004, but he held down McCain’s margins in rural Nevada…There are some very interested California Democrats looking toward Indiana today, and not just because the state appears poised to be called for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1996. Today, Indiana Democrats are also expected to elect a woman as head of their caucus in the Senate, the first time ever that a woman will lead any legislative caucus in the Hoosier State. That woman,Vi Simpson, is also the mother of California Democratic consultant Jason Kinney.