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Post by verasthebrujah on Jun 30, 2011 1:10:35 GMT -5
The thing is, while Obama has problems, the front-runners for the Republicans are about as sane as the Son of Sam. While it's a given that left-wingers would vote for Obama, I think it's more likely that moderate Republicans and libertarians would either not vote at all, or hold their noses and vote for Obama. I don't know a single moderate Republican or libertarian that would willingly vote for Michelle Bachmann. As someone I really respect once said, you can't have economic freedom without personal freedom, and anyone who seeks to take away one doesn't support the other. Also, that is the porniest pornstache I've ever seen. And this is where you get the possibility that if a Romney wins the party's nomination, a Bachmann or a Buchannan will challenge from the right (or vice versa). |
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Post by ltfred on Jun 30, 2011 7:54:36 GMT -5
The thing is, while Obama has problems, the front-runners for the Republicans are about as sane as the Son of Sam. The problem is, I think, that most people don't think about all of a politician's policies and compare them with the other one's. About 15-17% of people truly think about policies and, therefore, vote Democrat in all modern elections since 1980 There's also the rusted-on Republicans, who always vote Red, no matter what. That's probably about 25-28% of Americans, judging by Bush's approval rating at the end of his presidency. The rest vote on ephemera, personal circumstances and the personality of politicians. If a person has recently seen economic hardship, they'll vote against the incumbent. If they have recently earned prosperity, they'll vote in favour of the incumbant. Everything being even, incumbants have a slight bias in favour. They might not even vote at all. People often vote on the bais of total ephemera. This is, essentially, an exercise in coin-flipping. There are stories of voters voting against Kerry because he opposed abortion. And then there's the famous 'beer quotient'. A criminally large number of people vote for the person they find most friendly. And, of course, a depressing number of people are tricked by the media. Al Gore is a 'liar', Obama is a 'socialist', ect. |
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Post by verasthebrujah on Jun 30, 2011 16:54:51 GMT -5
The thing is, while Obama has problems, the front-runners for the Republicans are about as sane as the Son of Sam. The problem is, I think, that most people don't think about all of a politician's policies and compare them with the other one's. About 15-17% of people truly think about policies and, therefore, vote Democrat in all modern elections since 1980 There's also the rusted-on Republicans, who always vote Red, no matter what. That's probably about 25-28% of Americans, judging by Bush's approval rating at the end of his presidency. The rest vote on ephemera, personal circumstances and the personality of politicians. If a person has recently seen economic hardship, they'll vote against the incumbent. If they have recently earned prosperity, they'll vote in favour of the incumbant. Everything being even, incumbants have a slight bias in favour. They might not even vote at all. People often vote on the bais of total ephemera. This is, essentially, an exercise in coin-flipping. There are stories of voters voting against Kerry because he opposed abortion. And then there's the famous 'beer quotient'. A criminally large number of people vote for the person they find most friendly. And, of course, a depressing number of people are tricked by the media. Al Gore is a 'liar', Obama is a 'socialist', ect. First of all, it's not really fair to say that the only people who actually think about the issues always vote Democratic. There are Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Socialists, etc. that have deeply thought out stances. Generally, about 1/3 of voters will vote Democratic and another 1/3 will vote Republican regardless of who the presidential candidates are. The remaining third are swayed by the factors you listed or by considering a single issue. Interestingly, between 1/4 and 1/3 of voters will vote "incorrectly" in a presidential election (see The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics by Phil Converse). That is to say that an individual will vote for one party despite actually supporting the policies of the other. I've never seen any evidence, however, that this favors one party over the other. The voters most likely to make a "mistake" in this way are those who made their decision by attempting to consider all of the issues. This is because this is a very complex thought process that may lead to incorrect conclusions, especially when one considers the fact that moderate independent voters tend to score significantly lower on political knowledge tests. |
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Post by Mlle Antéchrist on Jun 30, 2011 18:25:18 GMT -5
Unless they believe that the male VP is really in charge and the female presidential candidate is just pretending because she is more popular. It's not like that's an uncommon belief, even when both the president and vice president are men. How many people thought that Cheney was the real power in the Bush Administration, while W was just his puppet? And that's why you pick Biden as your VP.  I kid, I kid. |
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