Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So everybody around is now like "please vote, please vote". I'd like to challenge that. I'll start with the observation that while obviously not everybody votes who has the right to, we don't exactly have a crisis level of participation here, we have about 2/3 of voters turn out. Which isn't that bad, it's not like a tiny group of people are deciding for the whole country.
Now, if somebody is so disinterested in politics - or so lazy, or disappointed, or uninformed - that they don't want to vote, why should any effort be spent on convincing them? Their vote probably would not be well thought out, and they would probably fail to accurately appreciate the consequences of their choices. Best case they'd vote at random, worst case they'd follow the first demagogue or pretty face they encounter. I mean, if you work for your local neighborhood demagogue, it's exactly what you want I guess, but why anybody else would support such an effort? I'd rather say the exact opposite - please don't vote unless you understand what it is about and what are you voting for - in which case you probably don't need anybody else to tell you what to do anyway!
The marginal voter has a high propensity to break for Democrats. This explains blue tribe cheerleading about the voting for the sake of voting. Get out the vote campaigns help Democrats.
This may have been the case a decade ago, but I'd be interested in anything showing that it still holds empirically with increasing polarisation on density and education, and decreasing polarisation on race.
Of course, I'd expect anyone cheerleading about voting for the sake of voting to benefit their own politics on average, because people cheerlead to their own social networks which usually are in political alignment with them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link