> The key to the whole issue is that only 40-50 percent of the > electorate in the U.S. bothers to vote on election day. In the last > elections barely 40 percent voted. The pollsters and the party > strategeists know that these are the people that count. Most > of these are upper middle class people. When the papers say > "center" they mean the center of this minority which in the end > decides the elections. I couldn't agree more. Voter turnout at elections is worryingly low. In Britain, in the last general election (9 April 1992) about 3 in 4 adults turned out to vote. The Conservative Party was re-elected with 42 percent of the votes compared to Labour's 35 percent. I feel that if the turnout had been higher, say 85-90 percent rather than 75%, then Labour would have had a much better cahnce of defeating the right-wing Conservative government in the election. When voter turnout is low, then I feel this helps the the right-wing. As is quite rightly pointed out in the passage I quoted above, those who bother to vote when the turnout is low are often the richer segments of society. They will then continue to excercise a disproportionate influence in politics because they are far more likely to vote than poorer people. I sometimes feel that to get elected, left-wing politicians needn't "move to the centre". Instead, they should encourage more working-class voters to turn out to vote and so they will be able to win that way. -- Michael
