• 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…

Early voting is a great idea since America has not declared Election Day a national holiday. The fact is that there are many people out there who have employment situations that do not support voting during the time allocated on Election Day. There are others (myself included) who are registered to vote in a town that is an hour and a half away from where I live. So guess who gets to make the drive back to his hometown to vote and then make the drive back to his apartment to wait for the results on Election Day… That’s right!

There are any number of reasons why early election is a good idea. What about the truck driver who lives in Nebraska, but happens to be on an assignment to Maine? That person isn’t voting on Election Day no matter what they do! Sure, they could apply for an absentee ballot, but that’s about as inefficient as you can get (plus, most of the time the absentee ballots aren’t counted for days or weeks after the election).

At the same time, early voting is a horrible idea if you really aren’t firmly behind a candidate. In other words, if you go to the polls on the Saturday before the election just because it fits your schedule, can you be sure that you made the right decision? What if one of the candidates comes out with some ridiculously outlandish statements in the last 48 hours of the campaign? What if one of their major policy positions is diced up and mutilated by their fellow party members (think Obama’s tax plan in the mouths of Joe Biden and Bill Richardson)? In the year 2000, FOX News broke a story about then-Governor George W. Bush and his drunk driving revelations. Many people think that this negative story on Bush in the last few days of the election cost him the popular vote. Who knows?

Then again if you’re voraciously in favor of one candidate over another, then early voting is probably a good option for you. In the end, though, let’s remember that diversifying our voting methods is a good thing for America!