Michelle Obama urges supporters to vote

With Election Day just over a week away and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leading in the polls, his wife, Michelle, took to the airwaves Saturday to urge supporters to turn out Nov. 4. 

Though he has built leads reaching into the double digits in national and key battleground polls, Sen. Obama (Ill.) has urged supporters over the past two weeks to keep working hard, telling them that a victory over Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) is not assured.

{mosads}In the Democratic Party’s weekly address, Michelle Obama portrays the consequences of not voting, and not voting for her husband, as dire.

“[Y]our vote is important because if you don’t vote, you are saying that you’re fine with the way things are. You cast an equally powerful ballot for four more years that look just like the last eight,” said Obama, who also noted that her father was a precinct captain in Chicago.

“In 2004, 16 million Americans who could have voted, didn’t. Yet, the election was decided by just 59,000 votes in Ohio,” said Obama, speaking from Columbus. “This time, we can’t wake up Nov. 5 only to discover we fell just short and didn’t elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden. We can’t look back and think about what might have been,” she said.

Turnout is critical to success in any election but may be even more important to securing – or strengthening — an Obama victory.

Because the candidate appeals to so many young voters and African Americans, two camps that have historically shown low turnout, Obama’s campaign stands to benefit greatly from reversing that trend. Likewise, huge voter registration numbers this year, mostly favoring the Democratic Party, means Obama will want to get newly registered voters to the polls, another group that traditionally votes in low numbers.