GOP Get-Out-The-Vote in Ohio

The SF Chronicle has an article in today's paper about the get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio.

Political analysts said all the efforts by the Democratic party and allied groups to register voters and get them to the polls in Ohio's major cities were effectively canceled out by the Republicans' strategy of increasing the turnout of Bush's conservative base, especially religious voters.

"If you told Republicans before last night that the Democrats would have a 216,000-vote margin in Cuyahoga County and a 35,000- to 40,000-vote margin in Franklin County, they would have thought the election would be lost," Lacy said.

But in the Republican stronghold of southwest Ohio -- where the GOP had spent months registering voters -- suburban counties were seeing an equally strong turnout. In Butler County north of Cincinnati, Bush was up by 52,000 votes -- erasing almost a quarter of the advantage Kerry had built up in Cuyahoga County.