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Muslim Voter TurnoutTuesday New York Times features a story about leaders of the American Muslim community complaining about the Obama campaign not treating them well enough. I was struck by one paragraph that didn’t pass my smell test: In 2006, the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee arranged for 53 Muslim cabdrivers to skip their shifts at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia to transport voters to the polls for the midterm election. Of an estimated 60,000 registered Muslim voters in the state, 86 percent turned out and voted overwhelmingly for Jim Webb, a Democrat running for the Senate who subsequently won the election, according to data collected by the committee. I then went to the Virginia elections website where they, helpfully, list voter turnout percentages for every since 1976 and discovered that the overall turnout in Virginia in 2006 was 52.7%! Now the idea that any group had an 86% turnout in any election outside of the old Soviet Union is, of course, totally preposterous. And anybody with any knowledge about poltics would know this. That an advocacy group would try to get away with claiming such clout is common place. But the idea that the New York Times would print such BS is disturbing. Muslim Turnout
Apparently, Mormons showed a NINETY-FIVE percent turnout in the Iowa caucus (voting almost universally for Mitt Romney). So it's not unheard-of for certain, small, well-organized demographic groups to exhibit large turnout.
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If Virginia's Muslim community of 60,000 registered voters had turned out at the statewide rate of 52.7%, that would have been 31,620 voters. The VMPAC claims to have boosted that to 86%, which would be 51,600 voters, an increase of 19,980 over what would have been normally expected. The VMPAC claims to have accomplished this by getting 53 Muslim cabbies to skip work and instead ferry voters to the polls. Just accounting for the increased total, that would be about 377 riders per cab. According to Virginia election law, the polls are open for 13 hours, 6AM to 7PM (http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+24.2-603), so that is 29 riders per cab per hour delivered to election sites, or about 1 voter per cab every two minutes. Of course, not all the increased turnout would have arrived via cab, but the more you break down the numbers, the more ridiculous it looks, especially since they are hanging their hat on the Cabby Thesis.
I have seen no evidence that anything like 95% of Mormons turned out in Iowa. I found one pro-Romney web site that predicted a 50% turnout of Mormons but nothing that indicated whether even that number was accurate.
Perhaps the turn out was high triggered by the revelation in Macaca-gate that he was half Arab-Jew.
Plus they might have felt akin to the Sikh who was the victim of the macaca naming. Probably a 100% turnout of Sikhs against the jerk.
As for racialist jerks, Webb is clearly weirder, but that's for another day.
While 86% is pretty high, it's not pie in the sky. According to CNN.com, the total vote for the Virginia senate race was 2.3 million. The exit polls (margin of error noted) say there were 7% of voters identifying with a non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Atheist religion. That's about 180,000 people. So a 56,000 person turnout of Muslims isn't exactly unattainable. And 80% of the 7% supposedly voted for Web. I mean, was there a high turnout of Wiccans? Oh, and it doesn't say the cab drivers alone were the reason for the high turnout, although if you average 4 people per cab and figure 4 trips per hour, then you get 16 which is a little more than half of your 29. The 7% in the Virginia exit poll identifying with a non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Atheist religion is the norm around the country. The national exit poll in 2006 had the number at 6%. So that is not any evidence that the 86% is not only pie in the sky but just not possible. remember Webb is not a Muslim. It's not like this election was a earthshaking event for the Muslim community.
You write:
Funny line (well, sort of). But actually, turnouts over 80% are standard in many parts of Europe. Germany's general elections in 1998, for example, had a turnout of 82.2%. So perhaps there is a not-so-preposterous middle between the US and the Soviet Union? I would guess Jewish turnout is roughly that high in many localities. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Jewish turnout was high in neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Manhattan and The Bronx in the good old says of the 1960s and 1970s, but NOT today! Jews are too spread out and are no longer concentrated in neighborhoods of antiquity, except for Borough Park in Brooklyn (or perhaps Kirias Joel in Orange County, NY). Even the South Florida localities don't have the concentration written about by, The New York Times, you should pardon the expression. So for 86 percent to write that Jews currently turn out in those numbers is as credible as the New York Times, you should pardon the expression, writing that Moslems turned out in those percentages for Webb.
Why are you at all surprised that the NY Times would print something that was not factually accurate? Their credibility as a news source is part of New York history. Jerry, do you know anything outside of this very parochial world of NYC politics. European voter turnouts are routinely around 80% for entire nations. And quite a few countries average around 86% or more. Really, stick with what you know, which you do know very well.
exactly. 92% of all Belgian registered voters voted in the 2003 parliamentary elections. Denmark, 87% in 2001. Iceland, 88% in 2002. Malta, 96% in 2003.
But a few examples. what group of people have a ninety five percent voter turnout
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