Voting-Age Population

The numbers will speak volumes this year. Post election analysis will be crazy. And, since I have the luxury of being awake and at a computer 6 hours before the US is even awake, I'll register some predictions.
I am interested to see the turn out rate and what 'sliver' of the population makes the difference. From the census bureau, we know this:

217.8 million Number of voting-age U.S. residents.

• 153.9 million were single-race non-Hispanic white
• 26.4 million were black
• 26.3 million Hispanic
• 10.0 million Asian
• 3.0 million American Indian or Alaska native
• 647,000 native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander.

Presidential Election: 2000
111 million: the number of people who voted in the 2000 presidential election, short of the record high of 114 million set in 1992.
State Turnout Trends (At or about 70%)
The 2000 presidential election voting rates in the District of Columbia, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota, highest in the nation.
National Turnout Trends
60% Percentage of eligible voters who cast their ballots in the November 2000 presidential election, slightly higher than the 58 percent who voted in 1996.

My prediction (because I can--where does the innate desire to predict come from? Do we secretly wish we were fortune tellers or astrologists?):
The old and the young will make this election interesting. The young and cell-phone using only population that hasn't been polled and the older folks who probably have their phones blocked by the national no-call lists will turn out in large volumes to vote for what the young will see as their right to finally 'speak out' and the pensioners might see as a vote of 'wisdom' for a divided country. I feel like it won't be that close, that it will be a large enough gap to allow the next president to lead with some (maybe not a lot) comfort; certainly no overwhelming mandate, but I can't see the courts.

The numbers: 134 million people will vote, give or take 500,000. That should put us near the numbers hit in the 1960's, the highest this century. This is in sync with my belief that the 60's are going to happen again.
The states: MN will have record numbers (from 68.8% in 2000), again, as will Wisconsin (from 66.1% in 2000), but my random thought prediction thinks we'll see a crazy high percentages from states like Misouri, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. (these states turned out 57.7%, 47.4, 53.7 in 2000).

The black vote will obviously favor Kerry, but not like it did for Gore and Clinton. The veteran's will be the ones to watch this year.

More later.