Teddy White entitled a Chapter about the election of 1960 as all passion spent. When there was nothing more to do and you actually started to get some perspective.
Here is the single defining number of this election: In Florida YouGov asked if you seriously considered another candidate other than the one you are voting for:
89% said no
11& said yes
The polls are pretty tightly grouped around 4%. Obama won by 3.86%.
So at the end of the day a modern campaign isn’t about persuasion, it is about GOTV. Turnout.
You can question the number. How many never trump articles were written here. Country Club Republicans who would never vote for Trump.
Well they are. Trump is getting about the same % of GOP votes as Romney.
The result was arguably baked in when the GOP didn’t try to address Hispanic concerns and as a result sentenced themselves to Demographic oblivion.
Still I find it amazing.
It reminds of a rather depressing view of existentialism – the evolved human brain forced to contemplate the meaningless of existence.
So much passion. So much argument. Who is being persuaded? Who is listening?
Fewer, I think, then we would like to admit.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/vvlr48n70w/OH_Prelim_20161106.pdf
We seem to have reached a sort of philosophical stalemate on the efficacy of democracy. Our pious rhetoric continues to be that “issues” are being “debated” by candidates of the opposing parties, with the American people then “deciding” something. Yet no one could possibly argue that even the (massively viewed) spectacles we call prez “debates” bear any resemblance to an actual debate of issues facing the nation. And Congressional and senate “debates” are watched or reviewed by perhaps 2% of the relevant voters. So no one can really maintain that the voters are “informed” or that the corporate media is effectively presenting the “issues”.
As for the 89% figure, could you realistically see yourself voting for a candidate from today’s Repub party, any candidate? I cannot, it would be impossible. Which is what partisan Repubs in their turn usually say—and when they do bluster that they “can’t” vote for the endorsed Repub (such as their prez nominee in 2016 or 2004), they (in the end) do indeed vote their party as usual.
Now I won’t vote for a Repub because I have followed their proposed “conservative” polices and watched them in action for nigh on 25 years, so I’d like to think my opposition is based on reason, evidence and history. Their (increasingly crazed) “conservative” policies are historically disastrous and they can’t understand evidence and results, cause and effect. So they have long since lost the debate in my mind.
The fact that 89% never considered another candidate in FL 2016 of course does not mean that they are not low info voters or that the useless corporate media has not spectacularly failed them. On the critical issue of the day, global warming, the media, the candidates and the voters have failed the country, and the planet. That a denialist should have the slightest chance of winning a senate seat from FLORIDA (of all places) is beyond ludicrous.
And to the extent there exist a small group of actual “independents” with persuadable open minds, what they see and hear in the coverage of the federal campaigns doesn’t give them much of a basis to make any sort of rational decision as to what is best for the country.
Perhaps the first reform is to frankly acknowledge that voters are not making rational choices based on a “debate” of the “issues”. The problem then is to decide exactly what American voters in our democracy circa 2016 ARE doing…
That a denialist should have the slightest chance of winning a senate seat from FLORIDA (of all places) is beyond ludicrous.
A denialist vs. a non-denialist candidate who isn’t going to do a damn thing to thwart global climate change. “What difference does it make?”
The Democratic House passed a carbon cap in 2010 and that would have made a difference if we hadn’t faced the filibuster. Murphy would likely support something like that in the future. It’s certainly possibly that in 2021 having Rubio rather than Murphy may prevent a substantive step to reduce climate change.
Always an excuse. And that assumes that a carbon tax would be an effective way to go on global climate change and not just another complex mechanism that transfer wealth upwards. Plus, climate change figured somewhere far below Trump’s groping in Clinton’s campaign.
Doesn’t matter — Murphy has consistently lagged Rubio since July and by a large enough margin that Clinton would have to win FL by at least five points for Murphy to have a chance to squeak out a win.
IOW — 89% of the electorate could cast their votes as soon as the nominees are known. Then they could spend the remaining five or more months before election day ignoring the whole thing more than they already do. That way 89% of the vote in all jurisdictions would be known far in advance and we can dispense with all data collection and chatter about about early voting data from those that act like children peeking into the gaily wrapped Christmas packages under the tree in the weeks before Christmas.
Or maybe they don’t even need to know the identity of the nominees and could cast a permanent ballot for R or D. Come election, only 11% of voters would need to be accommodated at polling stations. Think of the savings for local and state election boards. So much more efficient and with only 11% of the vote unknown, would be much harder to steal an election.
Well put.
Isn’t that more or less what currently happens? – Only battleground states are contested, and mainly “persuadable” voters are targeted by the campaigns within those states?
In countries with list systems, you vote for the party, and registering with one party could be considered tantamount to voting for it. (However most also have a second vote for individual candidates…)
Not formally. And those in non-battleground states can’t avoid and are subjected to this eighteen month long comedy-drama extravaganza that’s neither informative nor entertaining.
I blame the media for that and ultimately the public for allowing it. If literally millions of protest letters/emails/tweets hit Fox News (just one example) they would change immediately. At least they would be more subtle. The Almighty Buck is their real God.
It’s a reality show. There is drama. Consequences
But most are bit players whose lines are known
And those who improvise? What a small and odd gruup they are
But the play could not go on without them
No better statistic that says this election is about turnout, not sentiment.
And the other 11% are the people who actually heard what Trump was saying. About African-Americans, about Latinos, about LGBTQ people, about Muslims, about America’s place in the world, about economic policy.
Wait a minute, what did he say about economic policy?
60 minutes – American voters on Trump and Clinton. A microcosm of this election. Kroft leads with the polling results that 82% of likely voters are more disgusted than excited by the election. Out of 23 people in this focus group, only three are voting FOR a candidate. The others are voting against a candidate. The pre-existing divide in the electorate has been ramped up to the boiling point by the candidates, their campaigns, and the media. The same facts aren’t accepted or admitted across the divide and when they are false equivalences are used by one side or the other to dismiss a fact.
How is an ordinary person supposed to evaluate a shady business person that used every trick in the book, including bankruptcy, to avoid paying taxes and creditors to enrich himself against another person that’s funded and supported by a huge number of players that were bailed out by the USG (and has left them wealthier than ever) while millions of Americans were thrown out of work and lost houses and savings? Trump administration hires would be people like him (sleazy, no-nothing blowhards) and a Clinton administration would be filled by the same people that orchestrated the financial meltdown. Which one would plunge the country into further debt for the benefit of a few and cause the most financial damage of for the people? If I could answer that question, I could make a case for one of them.