The Values-Vote Myth

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 06:25:19PM +0000, Justin wrote:

> Not true.
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/03/voter.turnout.ap/
>
> "[Curtis] Gans puts the total turnout at nearly 120 million people.
> That represents just under 60% of eligible voters..."

You didn't vote against a candidate, you tacitly accept whatever other voters
decide. For you. There isn't "none of the above" option, unfortunately.

> 120m * 100%/60% = 200 million eligible voters  (The U.S. population
> according to census.gov was 290,809,777 as of 2003-07-01
>
> http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/
> "Bush Vote: 59,459,765"
> Let's generously round that up to 65 million.
>
> 65m/200m = 32.5% of eligible voters voted for Bush
> 65m/290.8m = 22.4% of the U.S. population voted for Bush
>
> I can't find an accurate number of registered voters, but one article
> suggests 15% of registered voters don't vote.  That means there are
> probably around 141m registered voters.  Bush didn't even win majority
> support from /those/.
>
> 65m/141m = 46% of registered voters voted for Bush

Don't mince numbers. About half of those who could and could be bothered to
vote voted for more of the same.

At least that's how the rest of the world is going to see it.

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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