Here’s a novel idea: Given that voter turnout is going to be crucial to whatever happens on November 2nd, and given that both parties are in a frenzy to register new voters, how about checking out what’s actually happening on the ground? You know, send an enterprising reporter out of the newsroom to actually count the number of new voters that those energetic folks with the clipboards are adding to the rolls. Especially, say, in states where the election may be decided by a hair.
In our country, we call it “reporting”.
And that’s exactly what The New York Times did with Ford Fessenden. The result was a story that ran on page one of the Times’ megalith Sunday edition and that deserved its play.
The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio — primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods — new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.
While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.
Whether these new voters will actually show up to do their civic duty on November is a whole other matter, as Fessenden notes, and will depend a lot on door-to-door follow-up by campaign workers, red and blue, in the last few days before Nov. 2. But given the numbers of people involved, if even a small percentage of the newly-registered do vote, their impact could be outsized. Credits to Fessenden for digging up a story that others ignored, and in the process running across — actual news!
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.