Voter registration numbers in the past couple of months.
Let's start on August 2, 2008, with the following numbers:
Democrats: 2,669,616
Republican: 1,937,735
And then the week by week additions:
Week Democratic Republican
08/09 3,833 709
08/16 4,354 531
08/23 2,188 275
08/30 3,410 688
09/06 4,851 1,309
09/13 7,307 2,942
Palin will have more of an effect on already-registered evangelical voters, no doubt. But when it comes to this measure of voter intensity -- it's obvious that Democratic energy still outweighs whatever new excitement Palin brought to the table.
Going back to the first week of 2008, the two main parties have added the following number of voters:
Democrats +184,113
Republicans +24,614
Kerry lost North Carolina by 435,000 votes in 2004. Assuming everyone who registered this year votes (for both parties), those new voters can close nearly 37 percent of that deficit. And even with their Palin-fueled surge, Democrats are still far outpacing GOP voter registration efforts.
(Voter registration numbers courtesy of my brother, who brought them to my attention.)