VOTER REGISTRATION IN N. CAROLINA

FROM BEN SMITH OF THE POLITICO

I asked readers last week what they were seeing on the ground, in terms of the reality of Obama's promised massive voter registration operation, and an Obama volunteer in Raleigh, NC, Adam Terando, offered a very detailed snapshot of what's going on in his county.

His (slightly edited) take:

They are going extremely well but they also have really high targets.

I'm attaching two graphs showing recent voter registration stats for Wake County (where Raleigh is located). This is one of the key counties. Kerry lost Wake by about 8,000 votes in 2004 and in 2008 Wake needs to be one of the counties where Obama runs up his total if we're going to win the state (Kerry lost NC by 500,000 votes in 2004 so you get an idea of how much they need to up turnout and flip votes).

Basically the Obama campaign added 15,000 Democrats and 7,000 Unaffiliated voters for the primary, then they pulled up stakes for 6-8 weeks and since they've started up again they've added another 6,000 Democrats and 6,000 Unaffiliated voters. Republicans in this time have only added 1,000 voters in Wake county since the beginning of the year (keep in mind Wake county is one of the fastest growing counties in the country). Republicans are down to 32% of registered voters where in the 2004 election they were 36% of registered voters in the county.

I have no doubt Obama will flip this county in 2008; the only question is by how much.Also: 12,000 new African Americans have registered since the beginning of the year and almost 4,000 just since the beginning of July.