NO EARTHQUAKE

Posted at 10:37 a.m. ET

A funny thing happened on the way to pundits declaring Tuesday's election the greatest ever, the greatest thing in history, in the universe, the greatest expression of human feeling, the greatest...

It wasn't.

The Politico reports the sobering news that turnout on Tuesday wasn't dramatically different, as a percentage of eligible voters, than it was last time out:

Despite widespread predictions of record turnout in this year’s presidential election, roughly the same portion of eligible voters cast ballots in 2008 as in 2004.

Between 60.7 percent and 61.7 percent of the 208.3 million eligible voters cast ballots this year, compared with 60.6 percent of those eligible in 2004, according to a voting analysis by American University political scientist Curtis Gans, an authority on voter turnout.

One explanation:

In 2004, turnout was 6 percentage points higher than in 2000. But Gans said he believed it did not spike more this year because fewer Republicans went to the polls. While it may be premature to draw conclusions, Gans said, it appeared that Republican voting declined 1.3 points, to 28.7 percent of the electorate, while Democratic turnout rose from 28.7 percent to 31.3 percent of the electorate.

The Democratic increase struck some analysts as modest, considering the party’s immense get-out-the-vote operation, strong anti-Bush sentiment and Obama's popularity.

It may have been modest, but it was enough to help create a landslide victory for Obama.  I am not amused.

But Obama's historic candidacy probably was responsible for bringing more youths to the polls this year, and it also helped explain what Gans said was the apparently significant rise in African-American turnout. Exit polls found that blacks constituted 13 percent of the electorate, a 2 percentage-point gain over 2004, Gans said; the increase may be even more than that, he said.

Finally...

Interestingly, Gans found that state efforts to make voting more convenient — for instance, through programs for early or mail-in voting — did not significantly boost turnout. Of the 14 states with the largest turnout increases, only six had so-called convenience voting initiatives, while in the 13 states with the greatest decline in voting, 12 had some form of convenience voting.

So it wasn't this grand voting show we'd been told about.  Still, our side must do much better next time, and planning must begin right now.

November 9, 2008.