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OpEdge: Only 1.8 Percent of Eligible Voters Has Chosen Trump So Far
Marc Jampole
March 21, 2016
by Marc Jampole
THE REAL QUESTION about this year’s electorate is how large a part of it truly seeks a confrontational authoritarian as our next president? How many people practice racism, condone violence, and approve of torture? How large is the population with fascist tendencies?
In other words, what part of the American public has voted for Donald Trump?
Judging from the numbers in a recent Economist article, “How non-voters blew it,” Trump has gathered relatively few supporters. In no state to hold a primary until now has more than 25 percent of Republican voters actually gone to the polls and cast a ballot. Even though Republican primary turnout is at its highest since Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980, only about 17 percent of eligible Republicans have voted in the primaries so far. Trump has averaged about 38 percent of the vote, which translates into a little less than 6.5 percent of all registered Republicans. And Republicans represent only about 28 percent of all voters, probably a little more in the states already holding primaries. If we extrapolate these numbers across the country, we find that a mere 1.8 percent of all eligible voters have so far supported Donald Trump.
The one word to describe American voters in 2016, is the same one word we can use to describe them virtually every year. That word isn’t “angry” or “frustrated,” not “conservative” or “liberal.” The one word to describe American voters is “apathetic.”
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have gotten an even lower percentage of the total votes than Trump. Hillary Clinton hasn’t gotten many more votes than Trump, as voter participation in Democratic primaries is down. If we’re using votes to measure whether any candidate is engaging the public, the answer is that none of the candidates are winning in any state or across the country, not even Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. With such low voter turnouts, we can’t proclaim anyone who has won a primary a real “winner.”
The real winners in this election season so far are not even “none of the above,” since that outcome would require people to enter voting booths and actually write those words down.
No, the real winners are the fascists like Donald Trump and the oligarchs like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, who represent, in their wealth, about one tenth of one percent of the country. Just as in the Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the oligarchs and the fascists share many traits in common: hunger for power, obsessed with control, well-funded, prone to lies and misrepresentations, ruthless.
I used to tell the kids on the Little League teams I managed that the only way to guarantee never losing is never to play. But in American politics, the people are losing by not playing. Only when the electorate stays home can fascists like Donald Trump win at the polls. Only when the electorate remains uninvolved can oligarchs manage the voting patterns of legislatures. Only when the electorate prefers ignorance can oligarchs and fascists get away with filling airwaves and bandwidth with their lies.
Marc Jampole, a member of our editorial board, is a poet and writer who runs Jampole Communications, a public relations and communications firm in Pittsburgh. He blogs several times a week at OpEdge.
THE REAL QUESTION about this year’s electorate is how large a part of it truly seeks a confrontational authoritarian as our next president? How many people practice racism, condone violence, and approve of torture? How large is the population with fascist tendencies?
In other words, what part of the American public has voted for Donald Trump?
Judging from the numbers in a recent Economist article, “How non-voters blew it,” Trump has gathered relatively few supporters. In no state to hold a primary until now has more than 25 percent of Republican voters actually gone to the polls and cast a ballot. Even though Republican primary turnout is at its highest since Ronald Reagan swept into office in 1980, only about 17 percent of eligible Republicans have voted in the primaries so far. Trump has averaged about 38 percent of the vote, which translates into a little less than 6.5 percent of all registered Republicans. And Republicans represent only about 28 percent of all voters, probably a little more in the states already holding primaries. If we extrapolate these numbers across the country, we find that a mere 1.8 percent of all eligible voters have so far supported Donald Trump.
The one word to describe American voters in 2016, is the same one word we can use to describe them virtually every year. That word isn’t “angry” or “frustrated,” not “conservative” or “liberal.” The one word to describe American voters is “apathetic.”
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have gotten an even lower percentage of the total votes than Trump. Hillary Clinton hasn’t gotten many more votes than Trump, as voter participation in Democratic primaries is down. If we’re using votes to measure whether any candidate is engaging the public, the answer is that none of the candidates are winning in any state or across the country, not even Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. With such low voter turnouts, we can’t proclaim anyone who has won a primary a real “winner.”
The real winners in this election season so far are not even “none of the above,” since that outcome would require people to enter voting booths and actually write those words down.
No, the real winners are the fascists like Donald Trump and the oligarchs like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, who represent, in their wealth, about one tenth of one percent of the country. Just as in the Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s, the oligarchs and the fascists share many traits in common: hunger for power, obsessed with control, well-funded, prone to lies and misrepresentations, ruthless.
I used to tell the kids on the Little League teams I managed that the only way to guarantee never losing is never to play. But in American politics, the people are losing by not playing. Only when the electorate stays home can fascists like Donald Trump win at the polls. Only when the electorate remains uninvolved can oligarchs manage the voting patterns of legislatures. Only when the electorate prefers ignorance can oligarchs and fascists get away with filling airwaves and bandwidth with their lies.
Marc Jampole, a member of our editorial board, is a poet and writer who runs Jampole Communications, a public relations and communications firm in Pittsburgh. He blogs several times a week at OpEdge.
