India just had a large regional election last week in which a third party (relative to the two dominant ones) just won the election. Pretty significant win. This is nothing new. Indian democracy to a greater or lesser degree in the last four decades has been a multi-party system. There is the religious free market types represented by the BJP, the secular free market section represented by the Congress, and the strong regional parties and the parties to the left of Congress (not too dissimilar to the Tory, Labour, Liberal divide in the UK?).
Not unsurprisingly, India has historically had higher voter turnout than the USA.
> b) By your standard, the US working class would have to be considered the most politically advanced in the West since its abstention rate is the highest - far higher than the European, Latin American, and Asian working classes, who turn out in large numbers to vote for parties whose liberal domestic and foreign policies are, with rare exceptions, virtually indistinguishable from those of the US Democrats. That is, to say the least, a highly questionable proposition.
“Politically advanced” suggests an advanced political consciousness and a decision based on that. This is also implied in the term “radical” used in the post Shane was responding to. But, in his response Shane explicitly noted that the point is not that the non-voters are a “radical-thinking constituency”. To see no difference between two corporate parties does not need politically advanced views, yes?
More relevant, I think Jordan raised the question of what others make of Doug’s statistic/analysis below:
> Nonvoters are not all that different from voters, according to a 2010 survey from Pew. More liberal, but also more satisfied with things in the U.S., and with a higher approval rating for Obama. Also more likely to support Obamacare than voters. They're just detached.
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> http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1786/who-are-nonvoters-less-republican-educated-younger
>
> There's really no untapped vein of significant radical opinion out there, I'm afraid.
May not be radical, but may be “radicalisable”. That they are more liberal than Democratic voters, but also more supportive of Obama might only be because they are more defensive of Obama (non-representative of the left as he is), and in particular Obamacare. Non-voters are also poorer than the “all adults” and “likely voters”. So they are more likely to feel left behind by both parties. Non-voters are also more non-white and more young.
Wojtek says it’s wishful thinking to think that people are making a “statement” by staying away, any more than they are making a statement by not going to church. But in both cases, one could argue, they are making a statement, if not an explicit one.
My response to Jordan is: I think Doug’s conclusion works only because of word choice: “no untapped vein of significant radical opinion”. That’s likely true. But that does not, at least per these statistics, translate to “no untapped vein”. If anything, the statistics seem to suggest otherwise, if only by a small margin.
—ravi