The more you think about Kerry's program, the less likely it is for you to vote for him. And thanks to the Democratic Party nomination process that was more frontloaded than ever, everyone will have months to think about it. :-)
***** 2004 PRIMARY TURNOUT LOW March 9, 2004
GROUPED PRIMARIES LOWER THAN INDIVIDUALS BETTER SELECTION METHOD NEEDED Curtis Gans
Contrary to some published reports and with the singular exception of the New Hampshire Democratic primary which set a new record high, Democratic turnout in the party's Presidential primaries through Super Tuesday was generally low - in the aggregate, the third lowest on record. . . .
In all, an estimated 14,500,000 eligible citizens or 7.2 percent of the national eligible electorate participated in the Presidential primaries through Super Tuesday. Only an estimated 10,300,000 citizens or 5.1 percent of the 200,482,000 eligible Americans nationally participated in the selection of Sen. John Kerry as the Democratic nominee. (Estimations made necessary by more than one million still uncounted absentee ballots in California.)
A comparatively high turnout, greater than either 2000 or 1996 and perhaps equaling or exceeding the 58.1 percent turnout of 1992 is expected in November. But turnout is not expected to reach the 60 percent plus levels of the 1960s. These are some of the highlights of a report issued today on Presidential primary turnout (and other issues) by the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE), a non-partisan, non-profit research organization specializing in voter turnout issues.
Among the other highlights and lowlights of this report:
-- Democratic turnout (an estimated 10.3 million) constituted 11.4 percent of the eligible electorate in the 20 states which held primaries through Super Tuesday, higher than the 9 percent which voted in the uncontested 1996 Presidential primaries and the virtually (after New Hampshire) uncontested primaries in 2000 in which 10.1 percent of the eligible electorate voted. But it was lower than the turnout for every other Presidential primary season in these states and more than 50 percent lower than the primary turnouts of 1968 and 1972. . . .
Democratic turnout was a record in New Hampshire and a near record in the Iowa caucuses in part because of the enormous amount of time and money spent in those states, the latter (money) a record, because competing in those contests involved retail campaigning and mobilization and because Democrats (along with some independents and Republicans) are united in their distaste for President George W. Bush, had the time to comparison shop and were propelled to the polls by that animus.
That turnout fell off sharply after those contests was not surprising. The campaign moved immediately (within one week) to grouped contests (see below) which were underfunded (resources having been severely depleted by Iowa and New Hampshire), which had to be conducted through television ads and one-shot visits to get free media coverage, which minimized grassroots mobilization and in which candidates other than Sen. Kerry could compete in only a limited number of states. . . .
It is also not surprising that after a primary campaign in which voter involvement was limited to six weeks and which was conducted in only 20 of the 50 states and which was a brief wholesale campaign in most of them, in almost all polls, between 20 and 30 percent of Americans still do not know enough about either Sen. Kerry or Sen. John Edwards to determine whether they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of either. But this truncated schedule, created by the Democratic Party, may come back to haunt it, as it gives the GOP five months to define Sen. Kerry before he has his optimum opportunity to present himself in the best light at the Democratic national convention.
What continues to be disturbing is the low level of voter turnout -- between 30 and 50 percent lower than turnouts in the 1960s and 70s. . . .
But whether the turnout increase is large or small, turnout this fall will not reach the mid-60 percent levels of the 1960s. There are two concrete indicators that demonstrate this: Contrary to public impression, the turnout for last year's California recall election was not, at 47.1 percent of the electorate, particularly high, despite the deep divisions in the state, the massive media coverage, the enormous amounts of money poured into it and the star quality of the elected governor. . . .
This [moving up their primaries to theoretically exert more influence on who would be the party's nominee] led to an ever-shortened campaign and an ever-greater grouping of primaries, which was further exacerbated this year, when, in the belief that it was in the Democratic Party's interest to end the primary season as early as possible, the party eliminated what had been a window of a few weeks between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and allowed seven states to hold primaries and caucuses a week later.
The result has been lower turnout in the primaries which are grouped, due to campaigns run largely through television advertising with little personal contact and grassroots mobilization, often with diminished resources to conduct these campaigns, lesser information about the candidates and consequent progressively lower voter turnout when compared to primaries which are held individually. . . .
But by truncating the process, they [Democrats] lost the advantage they had in the daily coverage of criticism of the President and his policies, propelled themselves into a four-month dead period before the national conventions in which citizen interest will decline, the opposition will have the opportunity to define the nature of the race and the party will have to remobilize its supporters. . . .
<http://www.fairvote.org/turnout/pressrelease.htm> ***** -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>