Early indications show the enthusiasm gap is alive and well in Ohio.
It seems like Cuyahoga County, the one county Democrats can’t afford to stay home, is deciding to do just that. Apparently Obama’s sparsely attended rally was indicative of turnout.
Today’s election is moving along smoothly with a light voter turnout.
Board of Elections Director Jane Platten said that by 10 a.m., just under 5 percent of the county’s registered voters had cast ballots. Another 205,000 absentee ballots had been returned by 10 a.m., representing another 20 percent of the total voter registration list.
Platten said she expects that about 430,000 votes will be cast by the end of the day, which is light considering the hotly contested county government race and the neck-and-neck governor’s race at stake. There are 978,268 registered voters in Cuyahoga County in this election.
For those keeping track, a turnout of 430,000 voters would be about 25,000 fewer voters than turned out back in 2006 and much worse than what Democrats were expecting. In other words, the mighty Democratic GOTV machine seems to be sputtering out.
In fact, I think this sums everything up pretty well.
