Michael Hoover wrote:
But there is no evidence that nonvoters differ from voters in any
ideological way.
poli sci guy stephen earl bennett's 1990 'deconstruction' ('the
uses and abuses of registration and turnout data', _ps_) of above
exposed it for canard it actually is...
That's not what a bunch of public opinion pundits told me recently.
Most surveys found little difference between voters & nonvoters. One
"deconstruction" isn't necessarily the last word.
Doug
If preferences of voters and non-voters are practically identical to
each other, despite differences in class, race, age, partisan
identification, etc. ("In November [2000], 48 percent of eligible
voters didn't go to the polls. These no shows tended to be younger
[27 percent of nonvoters were under 30] and less educated. They had
lower incomes and were more likely to identify themselves as
Independents. [Forty percent of nonvoters identify themselves as
Independents, compared to 27 percent of voters.]" [Pete Boyle and
Michael Fleischer, "Survey of Voters and Nonvoters Identifies Clues
," <a
href="http://www.pewtrusts.com/news/news_subpage.cfm?content_item_id=679&content_type_id=7&page=nr1";>March
12, 2001</a>), why spend money and hold elections at all? The
government might simply commission a polling firm to do a survey of a
couple of thousands of eligible electors (whether they are likely or
unlikely voters) and decide on the winners based on their
preferences. That would be much cheaper.
--
Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>
