The Largest Party of All
I'm doing some research and just ran across these numbers: Of the 197 million Americans who are eligible to vote, 142 million (72 percent) reported they were registered to vote. Among those registered, 126 million (89 percent) said they voted. That means the number of people who didn't vote on Election Day 2004 surpassed the number of people who voted for Bush. Is it fair to say we are divided when 71 million Americans didn't vote?
posted by storiesinamerica @ 1:07 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
A friend forwarded a link to your "Stories in America". Enjoyed reading and looking at the photographs.
I get the feeling that Central Valley cities (Merced, Modesto, Fresno) are as much part of Bush Land as the ones in the so called "Red states" that you traveled through and wrote about. People who support and elect Richard Pombo cannot be
different than majority of the voters in Crawford,TX.
While recent developments indicate chinks in the president's armor, I'm not sure that Democrats
will regain lost ground in the mid-term elections in 2006.
Is it fair to say we are divided when 71 million Americans didn't vote?
Hate to break the news to you, but that election had a fairly high voter turnout if you look at the history of these things. Another thing, since this country doesn't have a one-party system, aren't divisions inevitable, and in the long run healthy?
I disagree. The media never quotes people who don't vote, let alone people who do vote. We are used to hearing "high voter turnout," when in fact 42 percent of the voting population isn't high. Of course divisions are healthy; problem is, we're all led to believe that there are only two divisions: liberal and conservative. The fact is there are many factions within those divisions. Problem is, they don't have a voice.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the tragedy of low voter turnout numbers if I didn't know that 70% of voting age Americans could not name the three branches of government. Sorry, but 42% seems way, way too high.
Frankly, it seemed to me Kerry and Bush overlapped more often than not on most issues. Strategically this makes sense -- it's the voters you can trim out of the middle that will make the difference. Hence, you get Bush trying to market something called "compassionate conservatism" and Kerry supporting a war most liberals opposed.
The only thing we can be sure of looking at the numbers low voter turnout might suggest, is that there is a great division in this country between the apathetic and the non-apathetic.
Post a Comment
<< Home