Up to 121 million people will vote, compared with 105 million in 2000, according to Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. That would be 60 percent of eligible voters, the highest percentage since 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, when 61.9 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.
A heavy turnout probably hurts Bush, said Larry Sabato, who runs the University of Virginia's Center for Politics in Charlottesville, Virginia.
``If this turnout goes about 120 million, which it might, he's gone,'' Sabato said. ``That many new people are not showing up to say, `Good job, Mr. President.'''