Reply #18: Your numbers ...

[RoyGBiv]

Where are you getting them?

From the sources I've seen, turnout in 2000 was around 55%, and turnout in 2004 was around 59%. It's way too late/early, and I don't have the energy to look it up at the moment, but that's what I recall.

I'll await a response and then look this up tomorrow if there's an unexplained discrepancy. Just looking at it, it seems as though you're comparing % of voting age in 2000 to % of registered voters in 2004, but that's a guess.

As for some of the other comments in this thread, there are a number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings mentioned. Briefly, OKC and Tulsa (think oil) provide the worst chances for Democrats, i.e Dems have to overcome the urban vote. Rural areas in SE OK are more strongly Democratic than rural areas in the NW. Gore and especially Clinton got a lot of support there. No single county voting for Kerry is off recent trends, but not as far off as some seem to think. Democrats in Oklahoma are generally conservative overall and tend to dislike "coastal" Dems. They'd vote against a so-called NE Liberal out of spite.

OK politics is Southern politics with a twist provided by oil interests. In short, the political environment doesn't fit the model most respondents here have tried to apply to it. We do have a Democratic legislature, a Democratic governor currently, and a Democratic attorney general. It makes the mind boggle sometimes really, but it makes sense in its specific context.

And there was another issue on the ballot that was actually more energizing of the electorate than either the gay marriage amendment or even the general election: state lottery. It passed, handily, against the wishes of the state's fundamentalist leaders. Stick that into the equation and watch the computers explode.

That said, was there fraud? I think so. My ideas on this have been posted elsewhere at length. In short, to claim a "mandate" Shrub needed more than a close electoral vote. The best place to run up a popular vote total was in so-called "safe" states. That such a thing also benefits a Republican in a close Senate race makes OK an even more appealing target.