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Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees

160 points by Dowwie 10y ago

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
Can I just say the visualisation on this article is fantastic. Worth checking out even if you have little interest in the topic in the title.
- piva00 10y ago
  NY Times has been impressing me a lot with their online editions. To the point I'm considering to actually pay for the content. Another very good visualisation from them is the Panama Channel article http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas/panama-canal.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas...
  - mavhc 10y ago
    Bit buggy though, the animations stop if you scroll too fast, including the one that counts up to the number of million people in USA, if you scroll past too fast it ends up below the actual number, causing confusion
bad_user 10y ago
These 9% are representing a majority, since a lot of people didn't go to vote.
- bla2 10y ago
  No that's not the primary cause. See article.
- trolly 10y ago
  Considering both nominees have the highest disapproval rates I would say your statement is almost certainly incorrect. If anything, these 9% are representing a fundamental flaw in our first past the post system.
  - bad_user 10y ago
    Why is it incorrect? According to the statistic, 73 million did not vote in the primaries this year and about 88 million eligible adults do not vote at all. Add to that 103 million that are not eligible for voting. So if I'm not mistaken, only 18.5% voted in the primaries. You mention they have the highest disapproval rates, but how is disapproval expressed if not by voting?
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      The people who run in the primaries are selected by far fewer than 9%. Parties other than the two have been excluded by bipartisan agreement between the two.
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      What if they were denied the chance to vote due to onerous voting restrictions (closed primaries)? Clinton has horrible negatives, but the state party of NY forces voters to be registered by October of the previous year (!!!) for a late-April primary.
    - trolly 10y ago
      We may be using the word "representing" differently. I took it to mean "those 9% are statistically representative of the majority of americans views/choices/opinions/desires/whatever". Where as it seems you meant it as "those 9% represent a plurality of the votes cast in the primaries." Yes?
  - drabiega 10y ago
    Maybe in the Trump case, since he had fewer than half of the people that bothered to vote, but Clinton won the majority of those who bothered to vote in the primary, so even if you think the choice of her as unrepresentative of those who could have voted in the primary, first past the post isn't really the culprit, political apathy is. That said, I generally agree that first past the post is bad and should be gotten rid of.
- thomasfoster96 10y ago
  The article shows that this 9% does not represent a majority of expected voters in November.
jjawssd 10y ago
This isn't hacker news
- jokermatt999 10y ago
  You're getting downvoted because this article is actually not an example of the NYT's slanted coverage. Don't get me wrong, they've had some shamefully distorted articles (especially the infamous updated Bernie article), but this is just a short data visualization.
- meritt 10y ago
  The primary reason many people don't vote is one of convenience. If every state allowed early voting online (home or public libraries) and through mail-in ballots we would see a massive increase in participation. That's only going to happen through strong, reliable, accurate, and verifiable technology.
rwmj 10y ago
As I understand it, everyone could choose nominees (assuming you can hold your nose and join one of the two major US parties), so this isn't really interesting news? The only sad bit from my point of view is the number of disenfranchised felons.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Most state primaries are closed, so you have to register for a particular political party within an appropriate timeframe to be eligible to vote for a potential nominee. Both Ivanka and Eric Trump were too late to register as republicans and vote for their father in the New York primary. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/11/ivanka-and-eric-trump-didnt-register-in-time-to-vote-for-their-dad-in-new-york/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04...
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  In states that have caucuses it can be fairly tough for people working full-time jobs to attend them. I don't think that represents a large share of the popular vote, but it is a barrier to participation that requires more than holding one's nose to overcome.
  - shah_s 10y ago
    That's just an excuse. There is early voting and most, if not all states, legally mandate that a company give time off to employees to go vote.
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      Many caucuses disallow early voting and require a physical presence.
benevol 10y ago
The poll number timeline of the 2 parties: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/ge...
laichzeit0 10y ago
I don't understand the problem. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? If not, then what is the error 5%, 10%? Actually 9% is a really good sample.
- valarauca1 10y ago
  I don't understand the problem. Low particaptation in the democratic election process can cause people to not benefit from their government. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? You are implying it is indeed random. Voting isn't random sampling as people are not randomly selected to take part in the democratic process, people choice too, while everyone has the right too. For a proper bayesian result like you are suggesting participation would have to be randomly decided, and representative proportioinally of demographics (economic background, ethnic, educational, age, etc.), which it isn't. Voters are more often then not. Old, affluent (I.E.: Can afford to take time off of work to vote, or has a job that permits them to take time off to vote, or have time to research+register for absentee voting), black, educated. Under-educated, immigrant, and younger backgrounds are heavily under represented in the voting process currently, and for most modern records keeping. Furthermore some local governments have laws that discourage particaptation for some ethnic-minorities.
- linuskendall 10y ago
  Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population (ie. random)? Of whether the people choosing the candidates have to be or even should be statistically representative of the whole population can be argued. The choice of candidates or order on ballots in many countries is decided by various less-than-representative groups.
  - laichzeit0 10y ago
    > Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population That's pure conjecture as the article doesn't address the sample at all. It just basically says "The sample is 9%". It doesn't say why this is bad.
msravi 10y ago
I didn't know that felons weren't allowed to vote in the US - this was news to me. Looks like it varies by state: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286 http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...
- jacquesm 10y ago
  This is especially cruel because it doesn't take much to be labeled a felon in the US.
  - brian_cloutier 10y ago
    "The New Jim Crow" is an excellent book on this. There's a chapter about how this disproportionately affects young black men and disenfranchises them.
    - IpV8 10y ago
      Just bought this one, excited to start reading it when it arrives.
  - Someone1234 10y ago
    That plus unlike in other countries convictions don't "expire." Take the UK for example, many convictions fall away after sentence duration + 2-4 years (obviously depends how serious it is, see "Rehabilitation periods for specific sentences" table in the link)[0]. The UK doesn't disenfranchise anyway (only if you're incarcerated can you not vote). But even in a world where the UK did disenfranchise, it would still be a fairer system as we don't hold people's convictions over their head forever. The US is designed to keep people re-offending. Once you're convicted of a single crime you're effectively damaged goods forever, and have to report it (unless you get it expunged which is far harder if it occurred over 18). [0] http://hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/detailedguideroa/ http://hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/detailedguideroa/
- the_duke 10y ago
  This really shocked me when I found out about it a few years ago. According to this statistic [1], 2.5 % of the electorate is disenfranchised. 2.5% is a HUGE amount for a 2 party system with elections often being very tight. This is somewhat less severe due to fellons probably belonging to demographics less inclined to vote, but it's still a large number. [1] http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000287 http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...
thomasfoster96 10y ago
What astounds me the most is that party membership in the United States is actually very high compared to most other countries (except for India). Fewer than 200,000 Australians would currently be members of any political party - representing less than 1.5% of the total voters (around 14 million) - and that's being very generous with estimates of party membership figures. Most AFL football clubs would have more members than the major political parties. Perhaps Australia is too different to compare the United States - compulsory voting (90% turnout this year), shorter campaigns (this year's 8 week campaign was twice as long as usual), elections being held on a weekend, preferential voting (third party votes are still valuable) and the parliamentary system (you never actually vote directly for the leader of the country) obviously result in a very different attitude toward elections and politics.
- icc97 10y ago
  I definitely agree. The article appears to be painting a very dark picture that 91% don't want the candidates. Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.
  - mtgx 10y ago
    It's a problem in the current context of how U.S. elections work, where those 91% of the people feel "forced" into voting one of these two parties or candidates, even though 50% of them are registered Independent. If the U.S. electoral system easily allowed for other parties to exist and thrive (such as with a proportional representation voting system for Congress, which drastically increases how well people are represented in Congress, and could lead to much less "gridlock") then this wouldn't be an issue. Because those 91% of the people could easily ignore the Democratic and Republican candidates if they were terrible (which seems to be the case this year), and just vote for another party's candidate in the general election. And they could very much still do that. The problem is there's both a legal and unofficial collusion between the two main parties to control the elections in various ways (such as making the rules for who gets to debate), and between them and the media, who normally completely ignore other candidates, and don't treat them nearly as fairly, so their chances greatly diminish. There are a lot of things that could be done to fix this. But people need to support politicians willing to overhaul this system. Larry Lessig (on who the DNC changed the rules mid-game so he doesn't get to make his case in a debate) had some great ideas [1], and so does the Green Party [2]. Jill Stein also supports ranked choice voting, and I believe multi-winner ranked choice voting, too, which is a form of proportional representation [3]. Unfortunately, you're not going to hear about all of these ideas from a media that has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and you'd have to rely heavily on the Internet and social media to grow this movement (and do it before Google/Facebook/Twitter start ramping up their censorship to help their favorite candidates, as we've already started seeing them do). [1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ [2] http://www.gp.org/democracy#demFreeSpeech http://www.gp.org/democracy#demFreeSpeech [3] http://www.fairvote.org/proportional_representation http://www.fairvote.org/proportional_representation
icc97 10y ago
I don't see how this would be different from any other election with new candidates from both parties.
- j-c-h-e-n-g 10y ago
  I was sort of thinking the same thing - though more about how I hope they extend this visualization to past presidential elections.
lintiness 10y ago
the implication is that given interest / participation of a greater percent of the population, the candidates would be different. unlikely.
ErrantX 10y ago
More depressing is the ~40% of the eligible electorate who don't vote at all.
- afarrell 10y ago
  Even more depressing than that is the larger number of eligible electorate who don't bother to vote in elections that are only for local and legislative candidates.
awesomerobot 10y ago
Our voting system really needs to change, it's completely absurd that it hasn't just moved to a weekend or received special treatment as holidays.
- anthony_romeo 10y ago
  I agree! If I recall, employers are required to allow some time-off during the day for people to vote. Practically, however, this doesn't happen because a: some districts don't have nearly enough polling places and staff, resulting in hours-long wait times (around where I live, I've never had this problem, but it's a real issue in other (often more poverty-stricken) areas), and b: not many low-wage workers are willing to 'rock the boat' with their employer and would rather just not vote than face any hassle or retaliation. At the very least, we need smoother process where people can go to their city hall and vote over a period of a week or so, or vote by mail/online
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  Almost every state allows for early voting, and some like CA allow permanent voting by mail selection. Do this on some weekend. Before the election date, why wait for the actual Election Day at all?
- bickfordb 10y ago
  OR and WA are exclusively vote by mail. It's really convenient.
- bickfordb 10y ago
  OR and WA are exclusively vote by mail. It's really convenient.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  Both solutions are less effective than mail in ballots, online voting, or extending the vote duration (e.g. 7 days). People just bring up a "voting holiday" because they want an extra holiday. The reality is that many people would use the holiday to relax, go out of town, or get stuff done and voting percentage wouldn't improve. Ditto with weekends. People go out of town on the weekends, do you think they're going to stop because of a pesky vote? Even if they did for one year word would quickly spread that that is a "quiet" weekend and everyone would go for that reason. If you really want to improve voting: Drive through voting, like McDonald's, that takes the same amount of time as McDonald's to do, and that you have a seven day week within which to do. Literally make it a 5 minute job where you don't even need to exit your vehicle. People might scoff at that, call it lazy, but people ARE lazy. They want minimum hassle, minimum time, and maximum value. That's why drive-through places even exist.
nkrisc 10y ago
Theoretically this isn't an issue as this is just two political parties choosing the candidate that want to support for the general election. Political parties may choose their candidate however they like; they could pick a name from a hat if they wanted to. The issue is these two parties are so entrenched in the government as to essentially be legitimized as the only viable parties.
the_duke 10y ago
On a side note: I think this page is really well done. It's rare that that much (programming) effort is put into a simple newspaper article. Anyone agree?
- zaphar 10y ago
  I also really enjoyed the presentation of the information. The information was presented gradually in an easily digestible format.
- jaflo 10y ago
  Definitely, although the New York Times develops a lot more than other newspapers do: http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/category/interactive/ http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/category/interactive/
  - the_duke 10y ago
    They are one of the few newspapers that can possibly afford it, I guess.
- paradite 10y ago
  Definitely the best I've seen in any online news media websites. Their election tracker and real-time update of votes in the primaries were very well done. Even the summary after the vote looks neat: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary... http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california After some digging, found out they have open-sourced this library: https://github.com/sjwilliams/scrollstory https://github.com/sjwilliams/scrollstory MIT license, so we can use it for ourselves!
jccalhoun 10y ago
I don't see a problem. They are the Republican and Democratic party candidates. The members of those parties can nominate whomever they want. There's nothing in the constitution that says anything about how political parties chose their candidates. Primaries didn't always exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_primary#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri...
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >I don't see a problem. They are the Republican and Democratic party candidates. The members of those parties can nominate whomever they want. If there's no legal constraint on how the parties select candidates for office, why should the parties have a legal monopoly on ballot-line presence?
  - chrisseaton 10y ago
    > why should the parties have a legal monopoly on ballot-line presence I didn't think they did. Do they? Can't anyone apply to be on the ballot as long as they demonstrate a reasonable level of support?
    - tanderson92 10y ago
      Yes, but the parties allegedly have used the legal system to harm other candidates' efforts at ballot access: > In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid. > Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004. > Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money. By Ralph Nader https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/ralph-nader-why-bernie-sanders-was-right-to-run-as-a-democrat/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/...
the_duke 10y ago
Personally, being more familiar with European parliamentary systems, I find it quite astounding that the canidate selection is such an open an public process. In many countries, the parties select candidates internally and then present them to the public. Letting non-party members vote or register just before voting would be unthinkable there. Then again, this is probably a necessary result of the US political system: majority voting rules, therefore (basically) only two parties, and of course, the US is huge and diverse. The whole process is ridiculously long and expensive. But it's also a way to get people familiar with the candidates early on.
- kiiski 10y ago
  Edit (re: reply by dagss): I seem to have misunderstood the comment, but can't delete anymore.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    In Portugal it's just 7500, though our President doesn't really have that much power, he's more of a figurehead.
  - dagss 10y ago
    This is referring to who becomes candidate og Republican or Democratic parties. I am sure anyone can become presidential candidate in just the same way in the US - but not representing those parties.
- Mister_Snuggles 10y ago
  Looking at things from Canada, I feel the same way. These primaries, from what I can gather, are roughly the equivalent of the leadership selection process that happens with the political parties here. There is media coverage of those, but not to the extent that the US has. They're also run by the parties themselves, whereas the voting process seems to be handled by the individual states' election authorities. In Canada, Elections Canada doesn't really get involved in the process that the parties use to select their leader. It just does the general election, by-elections, etc.
- 10y ago
equivocates 10y ago
The article implies an indictment of Clinton & Trump. As if they were nominated inspire of the will of the vast majority of the people. But it's actually an indictment of the American public for failing to vote.
- stevenmays 10y ago
  No, you have to be registered to a political party to vote in primaries in most states. If you're registered independent you don't get a chance to vote unless that state has open primaries.
coliveira 10y ago
That's why this is called "primaries", not election. The primaries are supposed to chose candidates, not the president. Assuming that they're not representative just because of that is trying to stretch reality.
sorokod 10y ago
Exactly zero people voted for the UK's new prime minister.
hammock 10y ago
I would expect it to be an order or magnitude smaller than the general, just on the pure physics of it. If it were <1% this would be a story.
kr7 10y ago
Trump got the most votes of any Republican candidate in history. It probably would have been lower than 9% if Trump hadn't run.
- Eutow 10y ago
  Is it pertinent to point out that he also garnered the most votes against him than any Republican candidate in history?
  - kr7 10y ago
    How many people really voted against him, though? The media thought that everyone not voting for him was voting against him. They assumed that once the field narrowed voters would rally around another candidate and defeat Trump. That never happened. If the voters' goal was to beat Trump, they would have done it. By that logic, Obama had a record number of votes "against" him too, with 19,585,539 (53%) "against" him in a 3 man race, compared to Trump with 17,151,110 (55%) "against" him in a 5 man race.
curiousgal 10y ago
So what? if Americans focused more on congressional elections then things could change. There's only so much a president can do.
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago
  That's true. People act like the President has all the power. But that's now how our government work. Power is divided between all the three branches of the government. The President does not have all the power. Those that fear Trump will become a dictator does not understand the checks and balances of our government.
  - krapp 10y ago
    I'm opposed to Trump, possibly to an unreasonable degree, but I agree he's not going to turn into a dictator. He can still screw things up royally, and destroy what little civility in the political discourse there is in this country by pandering to the alt-right, conspiracy theorist, nihilist fringe and legitimizing them, but a President Trump would probably face more scrutiny and intransigence than even Obama has. Both parties would be trying their hardest to discredit him for a second term, and discredit his attempts at a legacy. Of course people said the same thing about Obama... I'm still waiting for that inevitable socialist coup he's supposed to pull off. Unfortunately, both the Democrats and Republicans have made an art out of convincing people that the Presidency is the only part of the government they should be engaged with.
    - DefaultUserHN 10y ago
      Agreed. Even if Trump wins, both parties and Congress, as well as Obama's appointed Supreme Court judge will try their hardest to prevent Trump from doing anything unconstitutional.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Those that fear Trump will become a dictator does not understand the checks and balances of our government. Or they recognize that the checks and balances of our government are not magic, and that Trump being elected as the nominee of a major party would also reflect a shift in the political landscape which would be reflected, particularly, in the actions of other politicians in that party, especially in the other elected branch -- and that those two branches together have the power to reshape the remaining branch.
pjc50 10y ago
I call this "agonizingly slow runoff voting", the opposite of instant runoff voting. The French presidential election is similar, although the first round all the candidates are considered as a single pool rather than two party-orientated pools. IRV and proportional systems produce 'external' coalitions at the government level. FPTP produces 'internal' coalitions, which is why the Republican party looks so strange from the outside.
gotherewhere 10y ago
Don't see why folk don't vote for Gary Johnson. He appeals to both Bernie Sanders voters and disenfranchised Republicans.
- jccalhoun 10y ago
  If people are like me they will probably not be voting for someone but against someone. I really don't want candidate Y to win so I'm going to vote for candidate X because that candidate has a better chance of winning than Johnson (or my pick Stein). Although my state usually goes pretty solidly for one political party so I might vote for Stein anyway because my anti-vote won't be enough.
- sbjustin 10y ago
  If more people were supporting Johnson he'd get on the debate stage and actually stand a shot. It's non-sense that people are saying they won't vote for him now when they don't have to decide till Nov 7th. Support him now and if he doesn't poll well enough after the debates go do your never X vote.
- plandis 10y ago
  Sanders and Johnson couldn't be more far apart on economic policy. It's a false equivalence to say that they are similar. One is inherently for welfare the other vehemently against it in most forms.
- omegaworks 10y ago
  Gary Johnson stated that he would eliminate the Board of Education. That is the opposite position from Bernie Sanders' push to expand access to public education. Don't take that as an endorsement of the status quo; right now schools are locally funded, with wealthier districts providing higher quality experiences and fighting vehemently against out-of-district access to those resources. [0] However, the market-based solution that GJ and the Libertarians propose looks like a step backwards, furthering the stratification between rich and poor. A stronger national education system is necessary to enable sensible resource allocation and equitable access to quality schools. 0. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...
scotty79 10y ago
There should be a way in the general elections to reject both candidates.
- lostapathy 10y ago
  Vote libertarian?
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    Johnson is not a very good libertarian, ironically.
    - stirner 10y ago
      He is still far more so than the other candidates.
      - humanrebar 10y ago
        The remaining candidates? Sure, but that's a pretty low bar. There were others vying for the libertarian nomination. I'd argue that Rand Paul is a better libertarian than Johnson, even.
    - Crespyl 10y ago
      Arguably that makes him an even better choice for non-libertarians who are fed up with both of the major parties. I desperately want to see a third option on the debate stage.
  - scotty79 10y ago
    I rather thought of: - Clinton - Trump - None (give me someone else) In case 3rd option gets most votes parties have to re-pick candidates in a week.
    - krapp 10y ago
      >In case 3rd option gets most votes parties have to re-pick candidates in a week. How about not having the parties choose one and only one candidate? Maybe let it be a competition between the top three?
eximius 10y ago
Can we just find someone reaaally moderate or even someone who contractually obligates themselves to doing literally nothing in office and then vote for them? Literally any 3rd party candidate we can all agree on to vote for instead of these two.
- awinder 10y ago
  I'm curious about what, in the current state of America, screams "we can just do nothing for the next 8 years and it'll all be good"
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    I think the argument is against doing something especially rash or corrupt because of the current state of America. What would happen if another Watergate occurred in the next few years?
  - eximius 10y ago
    I think nothing is objectively better than the results we'd get from either candidate. We will not improve our situation, but I don't believe we'll devolve into chaos either. With Trump he might bomb someone or aggravate existing problems or something else unimaginably stupid. With Hillary we'll just see an increase in corruption and an expansion of the rights of corporations at the costs of the individual.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  what is the appeal of "reaaally moderate" to you? 8 years of moderate, ineffectual government has been the Obama administration exactly. just because Fox News accuses Obama of being a radical leftist doesn't make it even remotely close to true. Obama is precisely the kind of moderate you're asking for. It's gotten us nowhere.
  - eximius 10y ago
    Better than blatantly corrupt or blatantly racist?
jorgeleo 10y ago
I found funny that there are more non-citizens than Hillary or Trump voters
- VLM 10y ago
  Not very funny for them, because their polling stats are extremely skewed politically, resulting in amnesty turning into a political football. If illegals voted perfectly 50:50 D:R they would have gotten amnesty decades ago and everything would have been reformed and sensible for generations, but its seen as an automatic source of "D" votes therefore as long as we have "D" and "R" they'll fight over it rather than fix it. A one line summary of why our immigration system is all screwed up, is most people who want to come here want to vote "D" and that riles up both the "D" and "R" parties therefore nothing can ever be fixed.
  - jorgeleo 10y ago
    Except undocumented cannot vote
TimJRobinson 10y ago
So why does the USA still have first past the post presidential voting? Is someone, anyone, in the government pushing for this to change? It seems painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that switching to a better voting system where you can still vote for 3rd party candidates and not have your vote go to waste would be a huge improvement.
- delecti 10y ago
  The electoral college is defined in the Constitution, and changing that is never easy. Anybody with the power to change things from the top is probably up there because of taking advantage of the way things currently work.
GarrisonPrime 10y ago
Friendly reminder: Not voting can be a vote in and of itself. A vote of "no confidence". True, voting for an alternative candidate will take a percentage of the votes away from Clinton or Trump, and having them win by a lower percentage would be a satisfying way to sock it to the system and send a message. (Although, knowing the media, if the stats started to look bad they would probably start reporting Clinton and Trump vote percentages only as percentages of the Clinton+Trump votes, rather than as percentages of all votes...) But wouldn't it be wonderful if one of them "wins" the job by receiving support from only a small fraction of eligible voters? I think having a President elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters would send a pretty good message.
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  Agreed. Right now my vote is for a specific major party candidate as possibly the least terrible that could win vs. an empty ballot in the presidential race. Many will say vote for a third party; but because that vote will be purely symbolic, any third party candidate that I might vote for has a higher bar to reach than a major party candidate: the party and candidate stand to gain more from a decent showing than any abstract message of protest disconnected from the party/candidate. So, a third party candidate is not a sensible default when the major party choices suck... not voting is the sensible default in that case.
- odesian 10y ago
  Send a message to who? The newly elected President from the 15% win? Some message. Get out and look for a candidate you believe in and spread the word.
- ChrisLTD 10y ago
  Even if the President was elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters, they would still wield 100% of the power of the presidency.
- sbjustin 10y ago
  The politicians don't care. Vote third party and get someone in there who will actually enact change.
Kinnard 10y ago
Great Data-Visualization Narrative, despite the bad news . . .
theorique 10y ago
Rephrased another way, relatively few voters actually (1) register and (2) vote in the party primaries. These registered voters apparently represent the "most politically involved" 10% of the overall population. (It's also somewhat misleading to include minors or non-citizen residents in the denominator when they aren't able to vote - it makes the result artificially small.) The primary system, while still susceptible to party insiders, is a lot more democratic than a system where political parties pick their candidates and say to the electorate "these are your choices, take it or leave it". (I won't address whether "more democratic" is a good thing, as that's a whole different can of worms.)
elicash 10y ago
This is the same percentage that chose Obama and McCain.
circa 10y ago
T-shirt link is relevant to discussion. So i'll leave this here. https://www.teepublic.com/show/496947-i-already-hate-our-next-president-t-shirt https://www.teepublic.com/show/496947-i-already-hate-our-nex...
ciethrenn 10y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/GaryJohnson/comments/4vq33l/choose_wisely_i_spent_some_free_time_making_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GaryJohnson/comments/4vq33l/choose_... vote gary johnson
vorotato 10y ago
Let's not forget it was embarrassingly painful to vote in the primaries this year. There were people who waited in lines for hours and never got to vote.

160 points by Dowwie 10y ago

Can I just say the visualisation on this article is fantastic. Worth checking out even if you have little interest in the topic in the title.

piva00 10y ago
NY Times has been impressing me a lot with their online editions. To the point I'm considering to actually pay for the content. Another very good visualisation from them is the Panama Channel article http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas/panama-canal.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/22/world/americas...
- mavhc 10y ago
  Bit buggy though, the animations stop if you scroll too fast, including the one that counts up to the number of million people in USA, if you scroll past too fast it ends up below the actual number, causing confusion

bad_user 10y ago

These 9% are representing a majority, since a lot of people didn't go to vote.

bla2 10y ago
No that's not the primary cause. See article.
trolly 10y ago
Considering both nominees have the highest disapproval rates I would say your statement is almost certainly incorrect. If anything, these 9% are representing a fundamental flaw in our first past the post system.
- bad_user 10y ago
  Why is it incorrect? According to the statistic, 73 million did not vote in the primaries this year and about 88 million eligible adults do not vote at all. Add to that 103 million that are not eligible for voting. So if I'm not mistaken, only 18.5% voted in the primaries. You mention they have the highest disapproval rates, but how is disapproval expressed if not by voting?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    The people who run in the primaries are selected by far fewer than 9%. Parties other than the two have been excluded by bipartisan agreement between the two.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    What if they were denied the chance to vote due to onerous voting restrictions (closed primaries)? Clinton has horrible negatives, but the state party of NY forces voters to be registered by October of the previous year (!!!) for a late-April primary.
  - trolly 10y ago
    We may be using the word "representing" differently. I took it to mean "those 9% are statistically representative of the majority of americans views/choices/opinions/desires/whatever". Where as it seems you meant it as "those 9% represent a plurality of the votes cast in the primaries." Yes?
- drabiega 10y ago
  Maybe in the Trump case, since he had fewer than half of the people that bothered to vote, but Clinton won the majority of those who bothered to vote in the primary, so even if you think the choice of her as unrepresentative of those who could have voted in the primary, first past the post isn't really the culprit, political apathy is. That said, I generally agree that first past the post is bad and should be gotten rid of.
thomasfoster96 10y ago
The article shows that this 9% does not represent a majority of expected voters in November.

jjawssd 10y ago

This isn't hacker news

jokermatt999 10y ago
You're getting downvoted because this article is actually not an example of the NYT's slanted coverage. Don't get me wrong, they've had some shamefully distorted articles (especially the infamous updated Bernie article), but this is just a short data visualization.
meritt 10y ago
The primary reason many people don't vote is one of convenience. If every state allowed early voting online (home or public libraries) and through mail-in ballots we would see a massive increase in participation. That's only going to happen through strong, reliable, accurate, and verifiable technology.

rwmj 10y ago

As I understand it, everyone could choose nominees (assuming you can hold your nose and join one of the two major US parties), so this isn't really interesting news? The only sad bit from my point of view is the number of disenfranchised felons.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Most state primaries are closed, so you have to register for a particular political party within an appropriate timeframe to be eligible to vote for a potential nominee. Both Ivanka and Eric Trump were too late to register as republicans and vote for their father in the New York primary. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04/11/ivanka-and-eric-trump-didnt-register-in-time-to-vote-for-their-dad-in-new-york/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/04...
0xcde4c3db 10y ago
In states that have caucuses it can be fairly tough for people working full-time jobs to attend them. I don't think that represents a large share of the popular vote, but it is a barrier to participation that requires more than holding one's nose to overcome.
- shah_s 10y ago
  That's just an excuse. There is early voting and most, if not all states, legally mandate that a company give time off to employees to go vote.
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    Many caucuses disallow early voting and require a physical presence.

benevol 10y ago

The poll number timeline of the 2 parties: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/ge...

laichzeit0 10y ago

I don't understand the problem. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? If not, then what is the error 5%, 10%? Actually 9% is a really good sample.

valarauca1 10y ago
I don't understand the problem. Low particaptation in the democratic election process can cause people to not benefit from their government. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? You are implying it is indeed random. Voting isn't random sampling as people are not randomly selected to take part in the democratic process, people choice too, while everyone has the right too. For a proper bayesian result like you are suggesting participation would have to be randomly decided, and representative proportioinally of demographics (economic background, ethnic, educational, age, etc.), which it isn't. Voters are more often then not. Old, affluent (I.E.: Can afford to take time off of work to vote, or has a job that permits them to take time off to vote, or have time to research+register for absentee voting), black, educated. Under-educated, immigrant, and younger backgrounds are heavily under represented in the voting process currently, and for most modern records keeping. Furthermore some local governments have laws that discourage particaptation for some ethnic-minorities.
linuskendall 10y ago
Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population (ie. random)? Of whether the people choosing the candidates have to be or even should be statistically representative of the whole population can be argued. The choice of candidates or order on ballots in many countries is decided by various less-than-representative groups.
- laichzeit0 10y ago
  > Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population That's pure conjecture as the article doesn't address the sample at all. It just basically says "The sample is 9%". It doesn't say why this is bad.

msravi 10y ago

I didn't know that felons weren't allowed to vote in the US - this was news to me. Looks like it varies by state: http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000286 http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

jacquesm 10y ago
This is especially cruel because it doesn't take much to be labeled a felon in the US.
- brian_cloutier 10y ago
  "The New Jim Crow" is an excellent book on this. There's a chapter about how this disproportionately affects young black men and disenfranchises them.
  - IpV8 10y ago
    Just bought this one, excited to start reading it when it arrives.
- Someone1234 10y ago
  That plus unlike in other countries convictions don't "expire." Take the UK for example, many convictions fall away after sentence duration + 2-4 years (obviously depends how serious it is, see "Rehabilitation periods for specific sentences" table in the link)[0]. The UK doesn't disenfranchise anyway (only if you're incarcerated can you not vote). But even in a world where the UK did disenfranchise, it would still be a fairer system as we don't hold people's convictions over their head forever. The US is designed to keep people re-offending. Once you're convicted of a single crime you're effectively damaged goods forever, and have to report it (unless you get it expunged which is far harder if it occurred over 18). [0] http://hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/detailedguideroa/ http://hub.unlock.org.uk/knowledgebase/detailedguideroa/
the_duke 10y ago
This really shocked me when I found out about it a few years ago. According to this statistic [1], 2.5 % of the electorate is disenfranchised. 2.5% is a HUGE amount for a 2 party system with elections often being very tight. This is somewhat less severe due to fellons probably belonging to demographics less inclined to vote, but it's still a large number. [1] http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000287 http://felonvoting.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...

thomasfoster96 10y ago

What astounds me the most is that party membership in the United States is actually very high compared to most other countries (except for India). Fewer than 200,000 Australians would currently be members of any political party - representing less than 1.5% of the total voters (around 14 million) - and that's being very generous with estimates of party membership figures. Most AFL football clubs would have more members than the major political parties. Perhaps Australia is too different to compare the United States - compulsory voting (90% turnout this year), shorter campaigns (this year's 8 week campaign was twice as long as usual), elections being held on a weekend, preferential voting (third party votes are still valuable) and the parliamentary system (you never actually vote directly for the leader of the country) obviously result in a very different attitude toward elections and politics.

icc97 10y ago
I definitely agree. The article appears to be painting a very dark picture that 91% don't want the candidates. Where as this is just stating the obvious of what happens in every country that first puts forward a leader of a party that is contending to win the overall election.
- mtgx 10y ago
  It's a problem in the current context of how U.S. elections work, where those 91% of the people feel "forced" into voting one of these two parties or candidates, even though 50% of them are registered Independent. If the U.S. electoral system easily allowed for other parties to exist and thrive (such as with a proportional representation voting system for Congress, which drastically increases how well people are represented in Congress, and could lead to much less "gridlock") then this wouldn't be an issue. Because those 91% of the people could easily ignore the Democratic and Republican candidates if they were terrible (which seems to be the case this year), and just vote for another party's candidate in the general election. And they could very much still do that. The problem is there's both a legal and unofficial collusion between the two main parties to control the elections in various ways (such as making the rules for who gets to debate), and between them and the media, who normally completely ignore other candidates, and don't treat them nearly as fairly, so their chances greatly diminish. There are a lot of things that could be done to fix this. But people need to support politicians willing to overhaul this system. Larry Lessig (on who the DNC changed the rules mid-game so he doesn't get to make his case in a debate) had some great ideas [1], and so does the Green Party [2]. Jill Stein also supports ranked choice voting, and I believe multi-winner ranked choice voting, too, which is a form of proportional representation [3]. Unfortunately, you're not going to hear about all of these ideas from a media that has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and you'd have to rely heavily on the Internet and social media to grow this movement (and do it before Google/Facebook/Twitter start ramping up their censorship to help their favorite candidates, as we've already started seeing them do). [1] https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ https://lessig2016.us/the-plan/ [2] http://www.gp.org/democracy#demFreeSpeech http://www.gp.org/democracy#demFreeSpeech [3] http://www.fairvote.org/proportional_representation http://www.fairvote.org/proportional_representation

icc97 10y ago

I don't see how this would be different from any other election with new candidates from both parties.

j-c-h-e-n-g 10y ago
I was sort of thinking the same thing - though more about how I hope they extend this visualization to past presidential elections.

lintiness 10y ago

the implication is that given interest / participation of a greater percent of the population, the candidates would be different. unlikely.

ErrantX 10y ago

More depressing is the ~40% of the eligible electorate who don't vote at all.

afarrell 10y ago
Even more depressing than that is the larger number of eligible electorate who don't bother to vote in elections that are only for local and legislative candidates.

awesomerobot 10y ago

Our voting system really needs to change, it's completely absurd that it hasn't just moved to a weekend or received special treatment as holidays.

anthony_romeo 10y ago
I agree! If I recall, employers are required to allow some time-off during the day for people to vote. Practically, however, this doesn't happen because a: some districts don't have nearly enough polling places and staff, resulting in hours-long wait times (around where I live, I've never had this problem, but it's a real issue in other (often more poverty-stricken) areas), and b: not many low-wage workers are willing to 'rock the boat' with their employer and would rather just not vote than face any hassle or retaliation. At the very least, we need smoother process where people can go to their city hall and vote over a period of a week or so, or vote by mail/online
bluejekyll 10y ago
Almost every state allows for early voting, and some like CA allow permanent voting by mail selection. Do this on some weekend. Before the election date, why wait for the actual Election Day at all?
bickfordb 10y ago
OR and WA are exclusively vote by mail. It's really convenient.
bickfordb 10y ago
OR and WA are exclusively vote by mail. It's really convenient.
Someone1234 10y ago
Both solutions are less effective than mail in ballots, online voting, or extending the vote duration (e.g. 7 days). People just bring up a "voting holiday" because they want an extra holiday. The reality is that many people would use the holiday to relax, go out of town, or get stuff done and voting percentage wouldn't improve. Ditto with weekends. People go out of town on the weekends, do you think they're going to stop because of a pesky vote? Even if they did for one year word would quickly spread that that is a "quiet" weekend and everyone would go for that reason. If you really want to improve voting: Drive through voting, like McDonald's, that takes the same amount of time as McDonald's to do, and that you have a seven day week within which to do. Literally make it a 5 minute job where you don't even need to exit your vehicle. People might scoff at that, call it lazy, but people ARE lazy. They want minimum hassle, minimum time, and maximum value. That's why drive-through places even exist.

nkrisc 10y ago

Theoretically this isn't an issue as this is just two political parties choosing the candidate that want to support for the general election. Political parties may choose their candidate however they like; they could pick a name from a hat if they wanted to. The issue is these two parties are so entrenched in the government as to essentially be legitimized as the only viable parties.

the_duke 10y ago

On a side note: I think this page is really well done. It's rare that that much (programming) effort is put into a simple newspaper article. Anyone agree?

zaphar 10y ago
I also really enjoyed the presentation of the information. The information was presented gradually in an easily digestible format.
jaflo 10y ago
Definitely, although the New York Times develops a lot more than other newspapers do: http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/category/interactive/ http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/category/interactive/
- the_duke 10y ago
  They are one of the few newspapers that can possibly afford it, I guess.
paradite 10y ago
Definitely the best I've seen in any online news media websites. Their election tracker and real-time update of votes in the primaries were very well done. Even the summary after the vote looks neat: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary-calendar-and-results.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/primary... http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/california After some digging, found out they have open-sourced this library: https://github.com/sjwilliams/scrollstory https://github.com/sjwilliams/scrollstory MIT license, so we can use it for ourselves!

jccalhoun 10y ago

I don't see a problem. They are the Republican and Democratic party candidates. The members of those parties can nominate whomever they want. There's nothing in the constitution that says anything about how political parties chose their candidates. Primaries didn't always exist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_primary#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_pri...

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>I don't see a problem. They are the Republican and Democratic party candidates. The members of those parties can nominate whomever they want. If there's no legal constraint on how the parties select candidates for office, why should the parties have a legal monopoly on ballot-line presence?
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  > why should the parties have a legal monopoly on ballot-line presence I didn't think they did. Do they? Can't anyone apply to be on the ballot as long as they demonstrate a reasonable level of support?
  - tanderson92 10y ago
    Yes, but the parties allegedly have used the legal system to harm other candidates' efforts at ballot access: > In 2004, Democratic operatives were especially zealous in their efforts against my campaign. They hired private investigators to harass my campaign’s petition circulators in their homes in Ohio and Oregon and falsely threatened them with criminal prosecution for fake names that saboteurs had signed on their petitions, according to sworn affidavits from the workers and letters containing threats that were presented in court. Our petitions were also disqualified on arbitrary grounds: In Ohio, complaints submitted in court and to the office of the Secretary of State by groups of Democratic voters led officials there to invalidate our petitions. They disqualified hundreds of signatures on one list, for instance, because of a discrepancy involving the petition circulator’s signature. In Oregon, Democratic Secretary of State Bill Bradbury retroactively applied certain rules in a way that suddenly rendered our previously compliant petitions invalid. > Democrats and their allies (some later reimbursed by the DNC, according to both campaign finance reports and a party official in Maine who testified under oath) enlisted more than 90 lawyers from more than 50 law firms to file 29 complaints against my campaign in 18 states and with the Federal Election Commission for the express purpose of using the cost and delay of litigation to drain our resources. “We wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing him to spend money and resources defending these things,” operative Toby Moffett told The Washington Post in 2004. > Democrats falsely accused my campaign of fraud in state after state. In Pennsylvania, they forced us off the ballot after challenging more than 30,000 signatures on spurious technical grounds. My running mate, Peter Camejo, and I were ordered to pay more than $81,000 in litigation costs the plaintiffs, a group of Democratic voters, said they incurred. In an effort to collect, their law firm, Reed Smith ,which the DNC also hired in that cycle, froze my personal accounts at several banks for eight years. A criminal prosecution by the state attorney general later revealed that Pennsylvania House Democrats had, illegally at taxpayer expense, prepared the complaints against our campaign, and several people were convicted of related felonies. A federal court in Pennsylvania ultimately struck down the state law used against me that had led to the order that I pay the litigation costs. But Reed Smith was still allowed to keep $34,000 it withdrew from my accounts, because state courts wouldn’t let me present evidence that could have permitted me to recover the money. By Ralph Nader https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/ralph-nader-why-bernie-sanders-was-right-to-run-as-a-democrat/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/25/...

the_duke 10y ago

Personally, being more familiar with European parliamentary systems, I find it quite astounding that the canidate selection is such an open an public process. In many countries, the parties select candidates internally and then present them to the public. Letting non-party members vote or register just before voting would be unthinkable there. Then again, this is probably a necessary result of the US political system: majority voting rules, therefore (basically) only two parties, and of course, the US is huge and diverse. The whole process is ridiculously long and expensive. But it's also a way to get people familiar with the candidates early on.

kiiski 10y ago
Edit (re: reply by dagss): I seem to have misunderstood the comment, but can't delete anymore.
- icebraining 10y ago
  In Portugal it's just 7500, though our President doesn't really have that much power, he's more of a figurehead.
- dagss 10y ago
  This is referring to who becomes candidate og Republican or Democratic parties. I am sure anyone can become presidential candidate in just the same way in the US - but not representing those parties.
Mister_Snuggles 10y ago
Looking at things from Canada, I feel the same way. These primaries, from what I can gather, are roughly the equivalent of the leadership selection process that happens with the political parties here. There is media coverage of those, but not to the extent that the US has. They're also run by the parties themselves, whereas the voting process seems to be handled by the individual states' election authorities. In Canada, Elections Canada doesn't really get involved in the process that the parties use to select their leader. It just does the general election, by-elections, etc.
10y ago

equivocates 10y ago

The article implies an indictment of Clinton & Trump. As if they were nominated inspire of the will of the vast majority of the people. But it's actually an indictment of the American public for failing to vote.

stevenmays 10y ago
No, you have to be registered to a political party to vote in primaries in most states. If you're registered independent you don't get a chance to vote unless that state has open primaries.

coliveira 10y ago

That's why this is called "primaries", not election. The primaries are supposed to chose candidates, not the president. Assuming that they're not representative just because of that is trying to stretch reality.

sorokod 10y ago

Exactly zero people voted for the UK's new prime minister.

hammock 10y ago

I would expect it to be an order or magnitude smaller than the general, just on the pure physics of it. If it were <1% this would be a story.

kr7 10y ago

Trump got the most votes of any Republican candidate in history. It probably would have been lower than 9% if Trump hadn't run.

Eutow 10y ago
Is it pertinent to point out that he also garnered the most votes against him than any Republican candidate in history?
- kr7 10y ago
  How many people really voted against him, though? The media thought that everyone not voting for him was voting against him. They assumed that once the field narrowed voters would rally around another candidate and defeat Trump. That never happened. If the voters' goal was to beat Trump, they would have done it. By that logic, Obama had a record number of votes "against" him too, with 19,585,539 (53%) "against" him in a 3 man race, compared to Trump with 17,151,110 (55%) "against" him in a 5 man race.

curiousgal 10y ago

So what? if Americans focused more on congressional elections then things could change. There's only so much a president can do.

DefaultUserHN 10y ago
That's true. People act like the President has all the power. But that's now how our government work. Power is divided between all the three branches of the government. The President does not have all the power. Those that fear Trump will become a dictator does not understand the checks and balances of our government.
- krapp 10y ago
  I'm opposed to Trump, possibly to an unreasonable degree, but I agree he's not going to turn into a dictator. He can still screw things up royally, and destroy what little civility in the political discourse there is in this country by pandering to the alt-right, conspiracy theorist, nihilist fringe and legitimizing them, but a President Trump would probably face more scrutiny and intransigence than even Obama has. Both parties would be trying their hardest to discredit him for a second term, and discredit his attempts at a legacy. Of course people said the same thing about Obama... I'm still waiting for that inevitable socialist coup he's supposed to pull off. Unfortunately, both the Democrats and Republicans have made an art out of convincing people that the Presidency is the only part of the government they should be engaged with.
  - DefaultUserHN 10y ago
    Agreed. Even if Trump wins, both parties and Congress, as well as Obama's appointed Supreme Court judge will try their hardest to prevent Trump from doing anything unconstitutional.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Those that fear Trump will become a dictator does not understand the checks and balances of our government. Or they recognize that the checks and balances of our government are not magic, and that Trump being elected as the nominee of a major party would also reflect a shift in the political landscape which would be reflected, particularly, in the actions of other politicians in that party, especially in the other elected branch -- and that those two branches together have the power to reshape the remaining branch.

pjc50 10y ago

I call this "agonizingly slow runoff voting", the opposite of instant runoff voting. The French presidential election is similar, although the first round all the candidates are considered as a single pool rather than two party-orientated pools. IRV and proportional systems produce 'external' coalitions at the government level. FPTP produces 'internal' coalitions, which is why the Republican party looks so strange from the outside.

gotherewhere 10y ago

Don't see why folk don't vote for Gary Johnson. He appeals to both Bernie Sanders voters and disenfranchised Republicans.

jccalhoun 10y ago
If people are like me they will probably not be voting for someone but against someone. I really don't want candidate Y to win so I'm going to vote for candidate X because that candidate has a better chance of winning than Johnson (or my pick Stein). Although my state usually goes pretty solidly for one political party so I might vote for Stein anyway because my anti-vote won't be enough.
sbjustin 10y ago
If more people were supporting Johnson he'd get on the debate stage and actually stand a shot. It's non-sense that people are saying they won't vote for him now when they don't have to decide till Nov 7th. Support him now and if he doesn't poll well enough after the debates go do your never X vote.
plandis 10y ago
Sanders and Johnson couldn't be more far apart on economic policy. It's a false equivalence to say that they are similar. One is inherently for welfare the other vehemently against it in most forms.
omegaworks 10y ago
Gary Johnson stated that he would eliminate the Board of Education. That is the opposite position from Bernie Sanders' push to expand access to public education. Don't take that as an endorsement of the status quo; right now schools are locally funded, with wealthier districts providing higher quality experiences and fighting vehemently against out-of-district access to those resources. [0] However, the market-based solution that GJ and the Libertarians propose looks like a step backwards, furthering the stratification between rich and poor. A stronger national education system is necessary to enable sensible resource allocation and equitable access to quality schools. 0. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...

scotty79 10y ago

There should be a way in the general elections to reject both candidates.

lostapathy 10y ago
Vote libertarian?
- humanrebar 10y ago
  Johnson is not a very good libertarian, ironically.
  - stirner 10y ago
    He is still far more so than the other candidates.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      The remaining candidates? Sure, but that's a pretty low bar. There were others vying for the libertarian nomination. I'd argue that Rand Paul is a better libertarian than Johnson, even.
  - Crespyl 10y ago
    Arguably that makes him an even better choice for non-libertarians who are fed up with both of the major parties. I desperately want to see a third option on the debate stage.
- scotty79 10y ago
  I rather thought of: - Clinton - Trump - None (give me someone else) In case 3rd option gets most votes parties have to re-pick candidates in a week.
  - krapp 10y ago
    >In case 3rd option gets most votes parties have to re-pick candidates in a week. How about not having the parties choose one and only one candidate? Maybe let it be a competition between the top three?

eximius 10y ago

Can we just find someone reaaally moderate or even someone who contractually obligates themselves to doing literally nothing in office and then vote for them? Literally any 3rd party candidate we can all agree on to vote for instead of these two.

awinder 10y ago
I'm curious about what, in the current state of America, screams "we can just do nothing for the next 8 years and it'll all be good"
- humanrebar 10y ago
  I think the argument is against doing something especially rash or corrupt because of the current state of America. What would happen if another Watergate occurred in the next few years?
- eximius 10y ago
  I think nothing is objectively better than the results we'd get from either candidate. We will not improve our situation, but I don't believe we'll devolve into chaos either. With Trump he might bomb someone or aggravate existing problems or something else unimaginably stupid. With Hillary we'll just see an increase in corruption and an expansion of the rights of corporations at the costs of the individual.
metaphorm 10y ago
what is the appeal of "reaaally moderate" to you? 8 years of moderate, ineffectual government has been the Obama administration exactly. just because Fox News accuses Obama of being a radical leftist doesn't make it even remotely close to true. Obama is precisely the kind of moderate you're asking for. It's gotten us nowhere.
- eximius 10y ago
  Better than blatantly corrupt or blatantly racist?

jorgeleo 10y ago

I found funny that there are more non-citizens than Hillary or Trump voters

VLM 10y ago
Not very funny for them, because their polling stats are extremely skewed politically, resulting in amnesty turning into a political football. If illegals voted perfectly 50:50 D:R they would have gotten amnesty decades ago and everything would have been reformed and sensible for generations, but its seen as an automatic source of "D" votes therefore as long as we have "D" and "R" they'll fight over it rather than fix it. A one line summary of why our immigration system is all screwed up, is most people who want to come here want to vote "D" and that riles up both the "D" and "R" parties therefore nothing can ever be fixed.
- jorgeleo 10y ago
  Except undocumented cannot vote

TimJRobinson 10y ago

So why does the USA still have first past the post presidential voting? Is someone, anyone, in the government pushing for this to change? It seems painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that switching to a better voting system where you can still vote for 3rd party candidates and not have your vote go to waste would be a huge improvement.

delecti 10y ago
The electoral college is defined in the Constitution, and changing that is never easy. Anybody with the power to change things from the top is probably up there because of taking advantage of the way things currently work.

GarrisonPrime 10y ago

Friendly reminder: Not voting can be a vote in and of itself. A vote of "no confidence". True, voting for an alternative candidate will take a percentage of the votes away from Clinton or Trump, and having them win by a lower percentage would be a satisfying way to sock it to the system and send a message. (Although, knowing the media, if the stats started to look bad they would probably start reporting Clinton and Trump vote percentages only as percentages of the Clinton+Trump votes, rather than as percentages of all votes...) But wouldn't it be wonderful if one of them "wins" the job by receiving support from only a small fraction of eligible voters? I think having a President elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters would send a pretty good message.

sbuttgereit 10y ago
Agreed. Right now my vote is for a specific major party candidate as possibly the least terrible that could win vs. an empty ballot in the presidential race. Many will say vote for a third party; but because that vote will be purely symbolic, any third party candidate that I might vote for has a higher bar to reach than a major party candidate: the party and candidate stand to gain more from a decent showing than any abstract message of protest disconnected from the party/candidate. So, a third party candidate is not a sensible default when the major party choices suck... not voting is the sensible default in that case.
odesian 10y ago
Send a message to who? The newly elected President from the 15% win? Some message. Get out and look for a candidate you believe in and spread the word.
ChrisLTD 10y ago
Even if the President was elected by only 15-17% of eligible voters, they would still wield 100% of the power of the presidency.
sbjustin 10y ago
The politicians don't care. Vote third party and get someone in there who will actually enact change.

Kinnard 10y ago

Great Data-Visualization Narrative, despite the bad news . . .

theorique 10y ago

Rephrased another way, relatively few voters actually (1) register and (2) vote in the party primaries. These registered voters apparently represent the "most politically involved" 10% of the overall population. (It's also somewhat misleading to include minors or non-citizen residents in the denominator when they aren't able to vote - it makes the result artificially small.) The primary system, while still susceptible to party insiders, is a lot more democratic than a system where political parties pick their candidates and say to the electorate "these are your choices, take it or leave it". (I won't address whether "more democratic" is a good thing, as that's a whole different can of worms.)

elicash 10y ago

This is the same percentage that chose Obama and McCain.

circa 10y ago

T-shirt link is relevant to discussion. So i'll leave this here. https://www.teepublic.com/show/496947-i-already-hate-our-next-president-t-shirt https://www.teepublic.com/show/496947-i-already-hate-our-nex...

ciethrenn 10y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/GaryJohnson/comments/4vq33l/choose_wisely_i_spent_some_free_time_making_this/ https://www.reddit.com/r/GaryJohnson/comments/4vq33l/choose_... vote gary johnson

vorotato 10y ago

Let's not forget it was embarrassingly painful to vote in the primaries this year. There were people who waited in lines for hours and never got to vote.