by Mark Silva
The outcome of today's election matters more than elections in the past, most voters say. And somewhat more of them are saying that this year than have said so in the recent past.
The Gallup Poll has found that 74 percent of those surveyed say this one matters more than previous elections. Fewer than half of those surveyed had said that about the 1996 or 2000 elections.
"Gallup has found an extraordinarily high level of interest in the election throughout this year, and its data also suggest turnout will exceed what it was in 2004,'' Gallup's Jeff Jones reports.
"Democrats (80 percent) are slightly more likely than Republicans (74 percent) to attribute greater importance to the 2008 election outcome. That is a similar pattern to what Gallup showed for the 2004 election.''
Voter concern is "further underscored'' by the fact that 92 percent of registered voters surveyed agree with the statement: 'The stakes in this presidential election are higher than in previous years,' including 76 percent who strongly agree.''
Fifty-four percent of voters surveyed say they are "afraid of what will happen if [their] candidate for president does not win." Another 22 percent agree somewhat. This matches what Gallup found in the 2004 election.
"It would appear that U.S. voters as a whole view the outcome of presidential elections as more consequential than they did in the recent past,'' Jones concludes. "This has fueled a surge in turnout in the 2004 election, which is likely to be repeated again this Election Day.
The survey of 957 registered voters was run Oct. 23-26, and carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Comments
Know why it matters? Most of us honest, patriotic Americans don't have the money to leave this sinking ship of a country. Moreover, we don't want to. We want to fix it.
Posted by: And only a straight Democratic Party ticket will do that in most places. | November 4, 2008 10:29 AM
Yes it matters. And each of us owes Senator Obama our gratitude for bringing hope in a time of despair. ..............
http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/10/29/senator-obama-to-sir-with-love-2/
Posted by: Ohg Rea Tone | November 4, 2008 10:37 AM
Even after today, President Bush continues to damage our country !! Check out this editorial:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/opinion/04tue1.html?hp
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, Chicago | November 4, 2008 11:05 AM
Now More Than Ever
Today I will physically cast a vote for Barack Obama.
I will, substantively, be casting a vote for change.
To my mind, what it comes down to is this: will the wealthiest one percent give up that wealth peacefully, or will we have to take it from them via any means necessary?
For over a century the oligarchs have been collecting the wealth which was earned for them from the backs of the workers of this world. Now, in the early years of the next century, we see the bankruptcy of that philosophy. We see the physical devastation of the planet. We see the horrifying political conditions under which much of the world lives. We see the abject poverty that too many people, even in the richest nations, suffer. We see the way workers are treated like basic commodities, to be accumulated and discarded as needed.
For over a century they told us that this was the best economic system possible. If that’s true, what does it say about mankind, that this is the best we can do?
I don’t believe that, and I never have.
Now more than ever, the lie has been revealed. Now more than ever, the failure is apparent.
Don’t let them fool you. Don’t let them tell you that we can trim the hedges and all will be fine. Don’t let them tell you that any alternative to capitalism is “even worse.”
Don’t let them scare you into denying control over your own destiny.
We don’t, today, know what the correct answers will be to create an economic system which is truly fair to all. I know that some socialization is inevitable. Energy and Health care should not be for-profit enterprises. A person without access to energy is a primitive being. A person without access to healthcare is one illness away from devastation.
Not only can we do better, we must do better. In two months we will have a unified Democratic government, at a time when the old ideas of defending free enterprise and the rights of the few to control so much of the wealth, have all failed. Many millions in this nation and across the world are, at this moment, being snatched from the middle class and thrown into poverty, as industries and businesses contract as rapidly as possible amidst this enormous economic meltdown.
Who will represent them? Who will make sure that their future is assured? Who will see to it that those who have worked hard and, through no fault of their own, been cast aside, will not be left there to wilt?
Can we count on the unified government to propose and develop these new solutions? If you are under the age of 30, you might believe that "yes" is an acceptable answer.
It is not. By now we know that when we elect people who promise to change Washington, what happens instead is that it changes them. Candidate Obama has promised that it will not happen to President Obama. It will be up to us to hold him to that.
If we fail to insist on real, permanent change, we have only ourselves to blame when things get even worse. And in the end, the revolutionaries will then have been proved right: only all-out war could ever wrest control of the world economy from the hands of the oligarchs.
I don’t believe that, because my hopes and dreams work better when they aren’t so apocalyptic. My hopes and dreams work better when I choose to invest in a future where we vote our way there, where we create a mass movement that rolls over the current alignment and creates a new alignment.
We start tomorrow.
Posted by: Walt Bennett | November 4, 2008 12:49 PM