Huge rocks falling out of the sky? Or just another poor turnout in a midterm election? I’ve heard the voter turnout was the worst since 1942. Regardless of your favorite spin, that’s pretty said. This coverage of the election is my reblog of the week.
The pundit pages are pretty boring this week, as they contemplate the big non-news of the GOP midterm victory. This was exactly as predicted, so there’s no tasty pundit juice to be wrung out of it. The Senate seats that were up for grabs were mostly Democratic, many in red states that temporarily swung that way in 2008.
Then there’s the turnout issue, seen in this chart from here, to which I’ve added the 2014 data in a near-seamless fashion:
For the last half-century, as much as 20% of the electorate stays home during the midterms. This used to not matter much, but as it happens the people who don’t vote as much (especially the young) skew highly Democratic, and the people who vote all the time (especially the old) skew Republican. You can ignore any pundit who makes a big deal of the Message Of The Election without mentioning this…
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Shouts from the Abyss 