Even Democratic officials are conceding Republican John McCain will beat Democrat Barack Obama in the presidential race in Oklahoma, with the only question being whether Obama will do better than John Kerry's dismal showing four years ago.
"I think we may surprise the pollsters about the percent he will get, because I don't think they realize the number of young people — 35 and under — who will vote who have not voted before," says Ivan Holmes, the state Democratic Party chairman.
In 2004, Kerry got just 35 percent of the vote in losing by 456,000 votes to Republican George Bush.
"Kerry's performance was historically bad," state Election Board Secretary Michael Clingman said Monday.
But it was not nearly as bad as how Democrat George McGovern fared in 1972 against Republican Richard Nixon. McGovern lost 2-1 nationally against Nixon and received just 24 percent of the Oklahoma vote.
Kerry was not the choice of Oklahoma Democrats in February's presidential primary, finishing third, and neither was Obama, who got just 31 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton's 55 percent.
Oklahoma has been trending Republican for four decades. The last Democrat to win a presidential race in the state was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
The last Democrat to come close to winning in Oklahoma was Jimmy Carter, who lost the state by only 13,000 votes to Republican Gerald Ford in 1976. Four years later, Republican Ronald Reagan beat Carter in the state by almost 300,000 votes.
In other areas of the country, Democrats have been registering to vote in record numbers this year, driven largely by new voters Obama has brought into the political system.
But that has not happened so far in Oklahoma.
In fact, for the first six months of the year, about 7,000 more Republicans registered in Oklahoma, compared to about 3,000 Democrats.
In July, however, Clingman reports that slightly more than 3,000 Democrats registered statewide, compared with slightly less than 3,000 Republicans.
"This is the first month in awhile where Democratic registrations outnumbered Republicans, but by a narrow margin," he said.
Less than 2.1 million Oklahoma voters were registered by the end of July, but Clingman said the number could easily swell to the record of 2.2 million registered before the 2004 general election.
The deadline for new voters to register for the Nov. 4 general election is Oct. 10.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
