Democratic surges in new voter registration in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia have all been documented. Now there are some very positive signs from Nevada:A massive spike in voter registrations has placed Clark County on a pace to lead the nation in the percentage of new voters and has resulted in Democratic gains that could affect the general election in a key battleground state.(...)

"We've already passed the number of registration forms processed this year than we did in the last three years combined," said Larry Lomax, Clark County's registrar of voters.

The county has processed some 250,000 forms this year, including 150,000 new registrants, giving Democrats a wider margin of control in the state's most populous county.

From the late 1990s through 2003, Democrats hovered around 30,000 more voters in the county than Republicans. The margin now is 45,000.

Increasing the Democratic margin by 15,000 may not sound like much, but in 2000 Gore lost Nevada by only 21,593 votes, with Nader pulling in 15,008 (source). Nevada is not a lean-GOP state anymore. It is firmly in the toss-up category.

New voter registration also looks good in Pennsylvania. In 2003, for the citywide elections, Philadelphia was the site of the trial run for the massive voter registration drive Democratic groups have undertaken this year (emphasis mine):

Ms. Maxwell, of the League of Women Voters, noted that surges in registration have sometimes dissolved in disappointing turnout. But last year in the Philadelphia mayor's race, independent groups that registered thousands of new voters claimed their turnout was nearly as high as that in the rest of the electorate. Steve Rosenthal, the Democratic chief executive of America Coming Together, said 44 percent of the 85,000 voters his organization registered last year turned out, compared with 49 percent over all. The last sentence is important. During last year's trial run, the wave newly registered voters turned out at a rate almost equal to the rest of the electorate. And this was not a small wave. 85,000 represented a nearly 10% increase in the total number of registered voters in a city that gave Gore more than 80% of the vote in 2000.

Of course, even though Philadelphia was already looking good coming into 2004, that doesn't mean we slacked off this year:

In Montgomery County, Pa., the elections staff has been working nights and weekends since the week before Labor Day to process the crush of registrations - some 32,000 since May and counting. Today is the deadline for registering new voters in Pennsylvania, as well as Ohio, Michigan, Florida and 12 other states, and election workers will go on mandatory overtime to chip away at the thousands of forms that have been arriving daily.

To help in the effort, the Montgomery office has also added 12 computers, 15 phone lines and 12 workers from other departments - as well as one of the technicians whose usual job is fixing voting machines at the warehouse.

Across the county line in Philadelphia, overtime and weekend duty began in July to deal with what is now the highest number of new voter registrations in 21 years. The office says it is still six days behind the flow, and the last two days have brought about 10,500 new registration forms. At 204,000 [emphasis mine], the number of new registrations has already surpassed that of the last big year, 1992, which had 193,000.

Combine this year and last year, and Philadelphia has added roughly 300,000 new voters to its registration rolls. That is a 35% increase in citywide registration. According to normal turnout (two-third of registered voters in Presidential elections) and voting patterns (80%+ for the Democrat in Philly), that would increase the Democratic Presidential Nominee's margin of victory in Philadelphia by more than 120,000 votes. In 2000, Gore won Pennsylvania by 204,000 votes.

Considering all of this information, even before final new voter registration numbers for the cycle are reported from most states over the next two weeks, there seems little doubt that Democrats have kicked Republican butt up and down the country in terms of new voter registration. In a very real way, this means that we have already won no matter what happens on November 2nd. For many years to come, our tremendous organizational efforts in 2004 have structurally altered the electorate in our favor. This will benefit not only in future Presidential campaigns, but also Democrats in Senate, Governor, and House races. In order to build the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy and a new progressive America, this is exactly what we needed to do not only this year, but also what we need to continue doing in future election cycles. This is how you change the country. On November 2nd, it will be how we shock the world.