Tortured Logic

In a post on the NCGOP blog making the argument that Barack Obama has no chance of taking the state this fall, Executive Director Chris McClure says we should 'believe the numbers, not the hype.'

I don't disagree, but his numbers make no sense.

Here are the facts as he states them:

-George W. Bush received 1,961,166 votes in 2004.

-1,580,726 votes were cast in last month's Democratic primary

-There are 51,926 more registered Democrats and 223,829 more Unaffiliateds than there were in the state four years ago.

Here is his argument:

-Combine all the newly registered Democrats and Unaffiliateds with the number of people who voted in the Democratic primary, and it is less than the number of people who voted for Bush in 2004 so Obama has no chance.

Here is the remarkably fatal flaw in his logic: he is operating under the assumption that everyone who is going to vote Democratic this fall voted in the primary. Sure we had higher turnout than usual in the primary, but there are still hundreds of thousands of folks who didn't vote in May who will vote in November. He pretty much completely ignored that uncomfortable fact in his analysis.

I'm certainly not guaranteeing North Carolina will be competitive this fall but if he is going to entreat us to 'believe the numbers' then he should analyze them in a way more rooted in reality.