A big Washington Post story last week reported that the economic dislocation of the last four years had significantly reduced Hispanic and African American voter registration numbers nationwide. Under economic distress, uprooting and relocating, a lot of minority voters simply hadn’t managed to re-register. That makes intuitive sense, and it’s the kind of subterranean socioeconomic or demographic shift that can have big impacts on election outcomes.
But the story of those registration numbers is actually a bit more complicated than that. The raw Census data the Post relied on isn’t the best proxy for voter registration, an expert in the field tells TPM. Another tell that there may be more to this story: rather than using the Post piece to exhort its legions of field operatives and volunteers, the Obama campaign is dismissing it.
Brian Beutler has our story.
