• Senator Barack Obama received 52.92% of the popular vote while Senator John McCain received 45.67% of the popular vote. This compares to 2004 when President George Bush received 50.74% of the popular vote while Senator John Kerry received 48.27% of the popular vote.
• In terms of the total vote count, Obama received 69,456,884 votes while McCain received 59,934,813 votes. This is remarkable because Obama won this election by about 9 and a half million votes. For comparison’s sake, Bush received 62,040,610 votes in 2004 while Kerry received 59,028,444 votes.
• In total, there were 131,237,589 votes cast in 2008 versus 122,267,553 votes cast in 2004. This represents an increase of 8,970,036 votes in 2008 than in 2004.
• The total voter turnout as a percentage of eligible voters was approximately 63%. This percentage is the highest voter turnout since 1960, when 64.8% of eligible voters turned out.
• The increased “youth” vote only represented one additional percentage point in the overall voter turnout. In other words, the youth vote increased by only 1,312,376 votes – certainly not the huge bump that everyone expected

So there is an updated look at the 2008 voter turnout in comparison to the 2004 voter turnout. The 2008 was still an historic election and there was a giant leap in voter turnout, but it is worth mentioning that the youth turnout was not as big as was expected – further proving that just because far-left, anti-war, anti-Bush college students received increased coverage during this election season by a liberal national media, their groundswell of activism does not adequately represent the feelings of their peers. That might be the most interesting piece of information coming out of the 2008 election…

Not only is that not an increased voter turnout, but it’s lower than the last election! Sure, there may be some absentee ballots that need to be counted and after a recount here and there the total number of voters in 2008 might go up a few thousand, but even if the total number of votes cast should rise some astronomical number to 125 million, that’s still NOT the bigger turnout that all of the pundits (and the politicians) expected for this election cycle.

This tells us a few things. First, there was NOT some large groundswell of voter motivation to go out and vote in the most historic election of our time. Second, if the electorate remained essentially the same, then the inherent voter apathy in America was not changed in this election (which is a damn shame). Third, those who voted in 2004 and then voted again in 2008 must have been more likely to be open to the idea of voting for a different party. Remember, McCain only lost by about 7 points (or about 8 million votes).

While that is a significant number of voters, let’s hope that history remembers this election in a realistic view. Yes, 2008 was an historic election for any number of reasons – but not for bringing out more voters to the polls or energizing the electorate.