Some interesting facts about the primary contest so far.
First is that polling has become much more difficult. For example, in South Carolina every major poll except one predicted that Hillary Clinton would beat Bernie Sanders by between 18 and 30 points. The lone dissenting poll predicted that she would win by 50 points, so many people dismissed it as an outlier.
But Clinton won by 47 points. Why were all the other polls so far off? The biggest problem is that so few people even bother to vote any more. In South Carolina only 12.5% of registered Democrats voted in the Democratic primary. Many people (like young people) who told the polls that they supported Bernie Sanders didn’t bother to go to the polls on Saturday.
One way of looking at this is that with 12.5% turnout, if you do vote your vote counts for eight people.
Another interesting statistic is that if you just look at the actual number of people who have voted (or caucused), Clinton has already received more votes (448,766) than Donald Trump (420,315).
This means that if slightly less than 30,000 additional people had voted for Trump, he would have received more votes than Clinton. In a close race, especially one with low turnout, a small number of additional votes can have a huge (yuuge) impact.
Super Tuesday is tomorrow, so make your vote count and actually vote.
8 Comments
You really wonder how many people choose not to vote and then decide later they don’t approve of the government. I suppose that’s their right, but to your point, folks can have a much bigger impact than they think!
Never ceases to amaze me that many of the same people who complain about the gov’t are the same ones who don’t vote. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Low turnout typically favors Republicans too, which explains why they spend so much effort trying to suppress the vote with limited and restrictive registration and ID regs.
This is nothing new of course. I recall the late great Harry Nillson once put on one of his album covers – Vote Schmote!
Or as Bernie put it after Saturday’s election, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/bernie-sanders-bashes-wall-street-in-sweeping-speech-democracy-is-not-a-spectator-sport/
Voting tomorrow for Trump in Texas (Bernie seems no chance unfortunately).
Hassan, if you don’t mind my asking, are you voting for Trump because he’s your second choice to Sanders or because you believe he’s easier to beat in the general election?
THATGUY, I think whoever is left from Republican side will be easy to beat, Donald Trump may be slightly more than rest. Secondly I just feel like making Republican establishment suffer little more. And more importantly, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz will be more of a**holes than Trump. Since Trump does not stand for anything, it may be easier to deal with him (in an unlikely event of him winning general election).
Can’t argue with any of that. Thanks for the response!
Sadly, I don’t think I can argue with what Hassan says either (although Cruz may be easier to beat than Trump, not by much). If you don’t think Trump will be easy to beat, wait until you see my post for tomorrow.