This week's blog has been all about the presidential election. As always, the power of data is one of my favorite topics. According to the US census bureau, 64% of voting age citizens voted in the 2004 election and that was actually higher than the 60% who voted in 2000 which represents an increase of about 5 million people. (Actually there's a lot of ways to look at the numbers because the population increased at the same time so for the purposes of this blog, the 5 million people is the 4% of the 2004 voters.) According to Wikipedia the difference between George W Bush and John Kerry was 3,012,499 votes. So the election results are not just about the issues, what issues but about what motivates people to get out there and vote. If the US did have mandatory voting for all eligible citizens, who would win? Who are the 36% who don't vote and would their votes represent a cross-section of the people who do vote? Or would the entire political arena change in unexpected ways?
And that's it for the election... onwards to other topics.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment