WASHINGTON – Even before one vote was counted, this result was clear: The presidential race was a verdict on George W. Bush.

Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain positioned themselves as agents of change – that is, change from Bush.

The president’s approval ratings have hovered near historically low levels – it was just 26 percent in an AP-GfK poll conducted a couple of weeks before Election Day – and he was a factor in voters’ decision-making no matter how much he tried to keep out of the race.

Obama seized on Bush’s standing to make him a political liability for McCain, who in turn separated himself aggressively from the face of his own party as the campaign closed.

The president’s face has been such a fixture in anti-McCain ads that it was up to Laura Bush to add a touch of lightness to her husband’s woes.

“I’m really looking forward to Election Day,” she said at a Republican campaign event in Kentucky on Monday, “partly because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire year.”

The quietest place in Washington on Tuesday may have been the White House itself.
   
The president voted absentee several days ago, so there was no video of him at his precinct, no statements to reporters, no public appearance whatsoever.

Bush planned to spend his evening in the White House residence, watching TV coverage of election results and hosting a small dinner with his wife, Laura.

There was sure to be at least some celebrating – Tuesday is the first lady’s birthday. Otherwise, it was a day when the White House purposely went dark.

“He realizes this election is not about him,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said heading into voting day.

Tuesday marked the first time in 14 years – a period when Bush twice won the Texas governorship and the presidency – that he was not on the ballot.

Many pundits had no doubt about Tuesday’s outcome. Among them: Karl Rove, once of Bush’s closest aides and the architect of his two successful presidential runs. On election eve, Rove distributed his last analysis of the electoral map. It predicted Obama winning easily, with 338 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win.

The title of Rove’s e-mail: “The End.” He was referring to the election, but there was also a feeling of finality at the White House.

Outside, the post-Bush transition was starting. Construction workers churned away on Inauguration Day grandstands along Pennsylvania Avenue.

DENVER – The drumbeat to vote early is paying dividends for Barack Obama, especially in key battleground states in the South and West where Democrats have cast many more ballots than Republicans.
  
About a third of the American electorate voted before Election Day, largely to avoid long lines at the polls.
 
Record early voting by Democrats in Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado suggests the Obama campaign has rolled up an early advantage over John McCain.

More than 29 million people in 30 states have already voted. Democrats submitted 1 million more ballots than Republicans, though registration does not always indicate who voters choose for president.

Obama, who campaigned in Charlotte on Monday, had reason to expect early voting was breaking his way in North Carolina. Blacks made up 28 percent of that state’s early vote, though they are 21 percent of the population and accounted for just 19 percent of North Carolina’s overall 2004 vote.

Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said Friday that his party is in position for “an earthquake election” come Nov. 4.

In a new pornographic film that will be released on Election Day, a look-alike of Gov. Sarah Palin cavorts with Russian soldiers and a guy named Joe.

The film is the latest example of a trend in pornography to degrade prominent women by parodying them, said Patricia Willis, a visiting professor of women’s and gender studies at Wake Forest University.

“This is now being directed at Sarah Palin, but there have also been (films) about Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama,” Willis said. “One thing this says is that women who expose themselves to public scrutiny, especially political women, will be subjected to pornographic images.

“What they’re trying to do is hush women up, and the effect is to try to force women out of political life.”
She said there have also been pornographic parodies of such male politicians as Barack Obama, but that they are not as common.

Willis is the “activist-in-residence” at Wake Forest, which she explained means that she “tries to organize events that are on topics or issues of great concern to the community … to promote dialogue.” She is leading the Porn Wars Symposium, which begins Saturday at Wake Forest University.

“All these candidates are being mocked,” said Jane Caputi, a professor of women’s studies at Florida Atlantic University and one of the program’s speakers. “And they are being reduced to stereotypes and distortions to segregate them.”

The symposium, Willis said, will examine the pervasiveness of pornographic images in modern society.

“There are several goals that the pornographic industry has,” she said. “One is profit, to the tune of, in the U.S. alone, $20 billion a year. But it’s also about male sexual gratification, and it’s also about female subjugation, using sex and violence.”

Caputi said that she is “not opposed to sexualized imagery as long as it is in an atmosphere of equality and respect, but often it is in an atmosphere of inequality and disrespect.”

Willis said that studies have found the average first exposure of a boy to pornography is 11, and that boys 12 to 17 use pornography the most of any age group in the U.S.

“This is how their sexual identity of themselves is formed, and their images of girls and women,” Willis said.
The symposium will look not only at hard-core pornography but also sexual imagery in mainstream television, films, video games, magazines and billboards.

“It has become a way of life for us,” she said. “We don’t even notice very much anymore how it has invaded our everyday world. A lot of times, 10 years ago we might have seen something we’d immediately recognize as pornographic or obscene, but not now. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? To my mind, that’s not healthy.”

Caputi has produced a short documentary film, The Pornography of Everyday Life, which will be screened at the symposium. In it, she examines mainstream popular culture.

“There is a habit of thinking that sees power over another as a good thing, an arousing thing, and that sees women as sexual playthings,” she said.

The symposium will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday in the Annenberg Forum, Room 111, at Carswell Hall. In addition to Caputi, speakers will be Matt Ezzell, a board member of the organization Stop Porn Culture, and Ann Scales, a visiting professor of law at UNC Chapel Hill.

The symposium on Saturday will be followed by two events next week: a multimedia presentation called “Sex(ism), Identity and Intimacy in a Pornographic Culture” at 7 p.m. Thursday in Brendle Recital Hall in the Scales Fine Arts Center; and a symposium on free speech, “Equality-Based Perspectives on the Free Speech Norm: 21st Century Considerations,” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday at the Worrell Professional Center, Room 1309.

All three events are free to the public, but the symposium and the multimedia presentation are limited to people 18 and older.

By Sergio Quintana, NBC17 Reporter

WAKE COUNTY, N.C. — For the election in 2004, about 700,000 voters in North Carolina casted their ballots at early voting stations.

WASHINGTON — A significant Democratic lead this year in new registered voters in Florida represents a potential leg up for the party’s presidential candidate, Barack Obama.

The rub is getting these voters to show up on Election Day.

“The 2008 primary and caucus season was huge, and particularly among youth voters and groups, there’s a lot of energy on the ground,” said Abby Kiesa, a researcher with the nonpartisan Center for Information & Research on Civil Learning and Engagement.

With less than three weeks left for Floridians to register in time to vote in the presidential election, and just over four weeks until early voting begins Oct. 20, not everyone is convinced that a Democratic edge in newly registered voters means Republican candidate John McCain is necessarily disadvantaged.

“Florida Republicans have always been the underdogs when it comes to voter registration,” said Katie Gordon, a spokeswoman with the Republican Party of Florida. “Republicans consistently turn out more voters than Democrats — more voters in general and more of the new voters we register.”

With Florida again viewed as a presidential battleground this election, the Obama and McCain campaigns and the state political parties are competing frantically to register as many voters as possible before the Oct. 6 deadline.

There are now 10.6 million registered voters statewide, according to the latest published Florida Division of Elections numbers through July 28. Of those registered voters, 4.38 million identify themselves as Democrats, compared with 3.92 million for Republicans.

Obama’s campaign, especially, has proclaimed new voters a key cog in their efforts in Florida, where recent presidential elections have been decided by the slimmest of margins.

According to the latest state numbers, more than 252,000 of Florida’s newly registered voters this year have enrolled as Democrats, compared with more than 98,000 identifying themselves as Republican.
State Democrats say they have more up-to-date data, through the end of August, that reflects even better numbers for them.

The numbers show 287,770 new Democratic voter registrations since January, after purging the names of previous voters who died, moved away or become otherwise ineligible to vote. That compares to net gains of 112,290 for Republicans and 89,859 independent voters, they say.

Most nonpartisan experts and scholars agree that higher voter registration numbers do, in fact, positively correlate to higher numbers of people who actually show up to vote.

Michael McDonald, an elections expert at George Mason University in Virginia who has studied Florida voter registration and turnout statistics, said 65.9 percent of new voting registrants in the state in 2004 turned out for the presidential contest. Floridians who registered later in that year, closest to the presidential election, ended up voting in higher rates, he said.

McDonald and others caution that this year may be difficult to compare with earlier years, because, “I do think there is something going on with young people.”

Primaries Saw Record Numbers

Already this year, a record 6.5 million voters under age 30 nationwide turned up to vote in the presidential primaries and caucuses, many of them voting in presidential contests for the first time.

In Florida’s Jan. 29 primaries, for instance, more than 151,000 voters under age 30 voted in the Democratic primary, even though the party said it wouldn’t count and the candidates did not actively campaign in the state, and more than 134,000 voted in the state’s Republican primary, according to estimates from the nonpartisan center.

Overall, that turnout rate among eligible younger voters in Florida’s primary represented more than a tripling of the rate from the 2000 primary, from 4 percent to 14 percent.

McCain led the way in the Florida GOP primary by grabbing 30 percent of these young voters; Obama grabbed 43 percent of these voters in the Democratic primary, compared with 44 percent for Hillary Clinton.
Still, it is difficult to say how much of an impact this new youth vote will have on the Florida presidential election. The under-30 vote in Florida’s primaries this year, despite increased participation, still represented only a narrow demographic of overall voters, just 9 percent of all participants for Democrats, and 7 percent for Republicans.

However, if the race is razor close, any group of voters will be considered crucial.

More Republicans Came Out In 2004

McDonald also noted the 2004 Bush campaign showed that even when Democrats do well in turning out their young and other newer voters, the ability of Republicans to motivate their own new voters should not be discounted.

In Florida, for instance, Democrats out-registered Republicans by more than 60,000 new voters in 2004, according to numbers provided by state GOP spokeswoman Gordon.

However, turnout of those Republican registrants on Election Day was 75.7 percent, compared with 66.1 percent of the new Democrat registrants, Gordon said. All considered, Republicans ended up turning out 138 more of these voters than did Democrats, Gordon said.

“I don’t think Democrats can put all their eggs in the ‘new voters’ basket,” Gordon said. “Will some of these people they register vote? Yes, of course, but the stats prove it is the Republicans who will turn out more of the new voters we register.”

“We’ve learned from our mistakes,” said state Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff. Among things state Democrats are doing differently this year, he said, is making sure there’s a more aggressive effort to keep their newly registered Democratic voters active, involved and interested in the process, including volunteer work for the party.

There’s something else, Jotkoff said. The Democratic lead in newly registered voters so far this year is a lot more than 60,000.