have to perform well in general because president obama s likely to perform well in general but he has to have a moment like that or two moments like that in the first debate that will make people see him with new eyes. that s a very never done that before but he could do it. john kerry you would have said had no chance but did it eight years ago. the other thing is you re running into this early voting thing as well, which it s not actually 40 some odd days until the election, probably a narrower window, looking at colorado 80% of the people that voted in colorado in in the 2008 election cycle voted early. part of the problem for mitt romney is the ground game issue. the reason that democrats do better is because president obama has a and the dnc a fierce get out the vote and early registration drive and ground game. i don t think that early voting is going to make the debates any less important. especially because those people who vote early in most places, the third of america
now, we have to always remember the point of this is to influence voters out in the country. my guess is if there s a convention bounce, it will be due in no small part to the speech she gave along with the big ones we re expecting. let me speak briefly. we want to talk about julian castro, whether or not he delivered as a rising star and the outreach to not only texas but to the hispanic community, but also this change of venue tomorrow night and how that will affect their basic reason for doing that was not just the television audience. they were planning to do a registration drive, they were planning to do a get out the vote drive. they were going to have 65,000 ticket holders in line to get in and all those people were going to be approached in very novel ways by campaign volunteers. they insist, it s a little hard to check because we re still in the early stages, they insist they will still be able to do a lot of those things. i think the one thing you lose a little bit is the
last july, they passed a law making it harder to hold a registration drive for new voters. they feared it would disproporlgztally affect minority voters who tend to lean democratic and they appear to be right. they released remarkable new analysis on voter registration in the state of florida. we talked about this a little during the convention, but i think this is amazing. have you seen this graph? coming into the 04 presidential election. before the 04 election, this is what the increase in voter registration looked like in florida. democrats in terms of registering new voters had an edge of 40,000 voters. in 2008, it surged again, this is the work the parties are doing to register new voters. for this election, started in 2011, starting with the time when florida republicans made it harder to vote in the state, here s what the comparable members are for this election? oh.
especially for this campaign. they have operated so far with what looks to be a sharp understanding of the math that goes into winning elections. they have to understand momentum, right, they sure ly understand geography. it s not an accident that the party held its convention in florida which had not hosted a convention in 40 years but has voted for the winner of the presidential election for the past 40 years and where barack obama now leads in the polls by an average of one single point. republicans lost florida last time but not by a lot. they would very much like to win florida this year. putting the convention there was no accident. since the 08 election, republicans have passed laws in florida that changed voting a lot in that state. for one, they cut the time for early voting. also the republican governor in florida has conducted a purge of the voting rolls. last july they signed a law making it harder to hold a registration drive for new voters. they feared it would
hour, go after work or fight traffic to go do that, and people do it. that is a sign. but the worst thing for the president is this. that he s not going to be able to get a boost. when we look at other states, iowa in particular is fascinating, republicans have been very successful in their ongoing voter registration drive. remember this. the republican national committee in 2010 was not in a good place to be doing these on the ground, get out the vote at registration efforts. they are in much stronger position to do to that now. they are going to be active. democrats topped out in 2008 and that is the natural come down and that does not bode well for their party megyn: they have been putting a lot of effort into the registration drive and so on the democratic party. they say the numbers are not panning out in north carolina, colorado, nevada, new mexico, all of which are posting double digit percentage gains in the number of independent voters and declines in the number of registered