NP: Spock's Beard, V

Both the AP and Washington Monthly speak to something that I think has gone largely unnoticed in the horse race narratives of the 24-hour news cycle, and that's voter registration and, subsequently, turnout.

And maybe I've found inspiration from FiveThirtyEight.com, but I decided to do some math. Based on the numbers from hilzoy, the difference between new Democratic voters and new GOP voters in Iowa, Nevada and Oregon exceeds the difference in votes between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004.

Will they vote in November? That's a different question, obviously, but the other stat I picked up in compiling the numbers was the percentage of Democrats who voted for Kerry versus that of Republicans voting for Bush. Among the seven states cited, Dubya mostly held 93 percent of the GOP votes according to exit polls, with North Carolina at 96 percent and Pennsylvania down at 89 percent, which beat or tied Kerry's Democratic numbers in every case. Kerry, on the other hand, was down around 85 percent in Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

That's where this battle is really going to be fought, and that's why the Palin choice may backfire, because if the Obama team can use it to register more Democratic voters and get them out to the polls, it may very well cancel out any peeling off of women and racists from the Democratic ranks. And every indication from Team Obama is that they understand how things are going to play out at that very targeted level.

To continue all the baseball metaphors, Obama plays "small ball" and plays it well, so while the GOP keeps trying to swing for the fences -- running a real risk of striking out -- the Dems may string together singles and stolen bases and put themselves out of reach.