New Registrations

Almost all of the polls that we read about daily in the newspaper or hear about on the network news take data from ‘registered voters’ and ‘likely voters’. The ‘likely voter’ is usually defined as someone who has voted in the past and is considered likely to vote again. This category has tended to favor President Bush, although recently Kerry has pulled pretty much even in many polls. The ‘registered voter’ is someone who indicates that they are registered to vote, but has not indicated one way or another of their intention to vote. However one result that is usually not inlcuded in poll results is the number of newly registered voters. These tend to be young people or people that have never voted before (ie. immigrants, students, newly interested voteres). Not much is written about this third demographic of voters, how they will swing the election one way or another. But now states are reporting record turnouts for new voter registration. Of course, I would like to think that this would favor Kerry, as usually low turnout has benefited the Republicans. This is why I do not give my complete confidence in the polls that come out nearly every day.

For some insight into see how some of the major polling institutions tabulate their numbers, CBS has an interesting article on this subject:

CBS News