New Voters, Obamaha, and Obama, Japan
To followup on my election day post, I’ve been looking for numbers on turnout, but right now they’re all still estimates. At this point it looks like overall turnout, compared to 2004, moved from 55% of the eligible population to 62-66%, roughly matching the post WWII record set in 1960. What about the new voters in key demographic groups that Obama was counting on? They showed up: “About two-thirds of the new voters were under 30, twenty percent were black and another twenty percent were Hispanic. They went overwhelming for Obama.”
Another interesting tidbit is Nebraska 2nd congressional district, where Omaha is located. Everyone has their eyes on Missouri and North Carolina, which are still too close to call. But for the first time ever, split electoral votes may come out of Nebraska:
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that can split their electoral votes, although it’s never happened. Two of Nebraska’s five votes are awarded to the winner of the statewide election and each of the other votes are awarded to the winner in each of the state’s three congressional districts.
Obama targeted the 2nd District’s electoral vote, opening three campaign offices in Omaha and registered thousands of voters.
McCain has already won Nebraska’s four other electoral votes by winning 57 percent of the state’s vote, but in the 2nd District McCain’s led Obama by only 569 votes Wednesday. And a recount is possible in the District once 10,000 provisional and absentee provisional ballots are counted.
The Obama campaign was looking at multiple possible scenarios where they might end up with a 269-269 tie in the electoral college – like winning Kerry’s states plus only Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico. So they were looking to Omaha (Obamaha) to put him over the top. Obviously that’s not a concern at this point, but if Obama wins Omaha, it’ll be interesting to see how all the TV networks try to figure out how to adjust the display of their electoral maps to show a mixed result from a single state 
A while back I mentioned the town of Obama, Japan. Here they are celebrating Obama’s victory, in a way that only the Japanese can. Presumably the Hawaiian theme is because he was born in Hawaii.
