Down the stretch in the 2014 campaign, when the polls began to slide toward Republican candidates in key states, Democrats defiantly countered that they would ultimately be vindicated by their superior turnout effort. Not this year, said Republicans, who countered that their own turnout machine was growing more powerful and leveling the playing field.
Now that results are (mostly) in, what do they show? …
Determining the impact of get-out-the-vote efforts is a slippery business. It’s impossible to prove a negative – what would the results have been without the turnout efforts? – and comparing different elections in different years is challenging on a variety of levels, from candidates to issue environments. But in exit polls and state- and county-levels vote counts, there are measures that suggest some moves. CONT.
Dante Chinni (American U.), Wall Street Journal