Published: October 12, 2008 04:17 pm      

W.Va. gears up for early voting

CHARLESTON — A global economy in meltdown and the certainty of a new president may have new voters signing up in record numbers elsewhere, but West Virginia is comparatively unmoved this year.

Four years ago, John Kerry and George Bush repeatedly visited to compete for the state’s electoral votes, spurring the state to register the most voters since Harry Truman was president.

This year, it’s a different story.

Voter registration ends Oct. 14, a day before early voting begins in the state. The Secretary of State’s office won’t have official numbers until then, but preliminary reports suggest few new voters are getting motivated this year.

Numbers from last week showed 1,199,750 registered voters in the state, an increase of 16,255 from the May 13 primary. In 2004, voter registration jumped by more than 65,000 between the primary and the general election.

“It would appear to be a run-of-the-mill year so far,” said Jason Williams, election division manager in the Secretary of State’s office.

That’s not the case elsewhere. Nationally, there are more than 9 million new voters, and in the last six months registration has favored Democrats by a margin of nearly 4-to-1.

In the eight battleground states where voters register by party, an Associated Press analysis showed last week, Democrats have registered more than 1 million voters in the past four years — while the GOP has lost roughly 125,000.

In six of the eight, more voters also have recently registered as independents or as members of third parties than as Republicans.

That kind of enthusiasm is hard to find in West Virginia.

“It’s disappointing, but not surprising,” said Robert Rupp, a political scientist at West Virginia Wesleyan College. “The national candidates are not paying attention to us by either coming to campaign or by spending resources.”

That’s partly because of the primaries. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, was thrashed by rival Sen. Hillary Clinton by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Following that lopsided result, neither Obama nor running mate Sen. Joe Biden have visited the state, and pundits have largely written it off as a lock for McCain.

That may be changing, though. A Time/CNN Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted between Sept. 21 and Sept. 23 showed McCain leading Obama among likely voters by 50 percent to 46 percent, with a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

If the state does become competitive, though, it will be too late for the campaigns to put much effort into registering new voters with the deadline only days away.

“We don’t have people going out and knocking on doors like they do in the swing states,” Rupp said. “That’s where a lot of new registration is coming from.”