Stevens <3 of Oil Co. = Messed Up Elections in AK

I read on this rather liberally biased blog an interesting breakdown of the elections turn-out results in Alaska last night when my eyes were tired. I don't trust political blogs that are obviously biased. I assume they are exajerating most of their numbers and comments to a point where the truth becomes fuzzy. However, this morning I went ahead and looked at the numbers from 2004 vs. 2008. For the presidential election in 2004 Alaska had 301,914 people vote- a 66% turnout (and 60% in 2000). In the presidential election in 2008, Alaska had 223,258 people vote (so far- absentee hasn't been counted yet)- a turnout of ~54% lowest turnout ever for AK. This means that in 2008, a year of record numbers of people voting and record years for turnout percentages and a year when their own Governor is on the ticket, Alaska had a reduction of over 25% from 2008! This at a time when there was a record number of people voting in the Alaska primary, a record number of newly registered democrates, and record number of people going to political rallies. I guess that when Tuesday rolled around they just thought all the hoopla was over blown...

(Also, I found that the Washington Post got wind of this today as well - Link)