Friday, March 27, 2009
Opinion: No Electoral Mandate for Barack Obama?
This article, entitled "Opinion: No Electoral Mandate for Barack Obama?" talks about how the 2008 election was an obvious win for the Democrats, but doesn't necessarily mean it was an electoral mandate. In any case, it was more of a mandate for "hope" and "change" than it was for Barack Obama himself.
Module 8: Electoral Mandate
An electoral mandate in government, and more specifically that of the president, is the idea that voters strongly support the president's character and policies and believe that he got selected because there was a mandate from the electorate to put his policies through. Perhaps this even means he's the "chosen one." It sure does appear to me that Obama had a clear electoral mandate. After years or Bush bashing, the Democrats were aching to get one of their own in office. We all know the media has an unbelievable bias to the left, therefore the media's coverage of how terrible the Bush administration was and how they loved Obama oh-so-much was quite obvious during election time and is still quite obvious today. I believe because of this, the media has played a large role in the electoral mandate of Obama. They've played him up to be this great "messiah" who came to save Americans from Bush - that much is obvious. If they media didn't love Obama as much as they do, do you honestly think he would have done so well? I think not. The timing was right for Obama to take office. Many Americans were tired of Bush's policies on war and the economy and just wanted a face take on it all. Obama being the first African American nominee also played a role in this electoral mandate. Lots of people wanted to be part of this historic moment and may have voted with their hearts rather than with their minds. A majority of the country supported his ideas and his policies and selected him for the job. This is a prime example of an electoral mandate. The voters proved he had a mandate, or else McCain would have won. Not so sadly, that mandate has faded. Obama's approval ratings have plummeted below 50%. Many Americans are unhappy with his performance so far as president and are disappointed that they aren't getting what they voted for (told you so...?!). But hey, it's still early on in the running, let's see what this guy can do. I suppose it's too early to tell if his mandate is running on empty since he just got into office two months ago, but again, his approval ratings are on the downturn and it's been 2 months... a sign of worse to come? Shouldn't a president's approval rating stay high or even steady throughout his first year in office? Perhaps he really didn't have that mandate I thought it did, or else he'd be a little bit more popular with the crowd....
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Exit Polls: Women push Clinton to New Hampshire win
This article briefly discusses the role of exit polls in the 2008 election. Here we see exit polls are used to determine who supports whom and who has the edge against the other candidates. Although exit polls are useful, they are not always correct...
Exit Polls
An exit poll is used a political science tool to gain insight into how an election may turn out. We use exit polls to collect demographic data about voters and to find out why they voted as they did. As we all know, voting is an anonymous activity, so we cannot use a person’s vote on the ballot to determine the things we would like to study – thus we rely on these exit polls to ask voters who they actually voted for to perhaps gain some insight into trends and popular appeal. Exit polls, with all good intent, do have their problems.
Exit polls are often used to predict a winner before a winner is actually announced. This can create major problems. When a winner is predicted before the polls close, this may skew election turnout. For instance, say you live in California. On election day, you see that the exit polls are predicting the winner of a presidential election because of the votes cast on the east coast. Since California and the east coast of America have such a significant time zone change, you may think that because the polls on the east costs already closed and the “winner” was already announced that there is no incentive for you in California to vote, even though you may have hours left to do so. If every voter though this way, there would be no reason for persons on the west coast to vote because the east coast already determined the winner. When the media presents the exit polls as such we can see the problem clearly.
Exit polls during the 1980 and 2000 election clearly show the issues that can arise. During the 1980 presidential election, NBC declared Ronald Regan the winner early on in the night. Since NBC used their data from the east coast where it was 8:15 pm, persons on the west coast, where it was only 5:15 pm, showed up in much smaller numbers that was expected because NBC had already declared Regan the perceived winner. Obviously this prediction was correct, but this strategy is, as I see it, somewhat democratic. NBC has every right to use exit polls, but the way they present their findings seems shaky at best. I thought exit polls were used to scientifically measure demographics and voting trends – not ruin elections. NBC and others new stations should use caution when presenting their exit polling results because there will be millions of Americans who have not yet had the opportunity to vote, who deserve to have a say. In the end, it’s up to the individual voter to determine where they think their vote will count or not, but when the media plays such a large role in elections as they do nowadays, it makes it more difficult for voters to feel that their vote does truly count. If you were told that the election was already pretty much won by Obama – would you still vote for McCain?
Again, in the 2000 election we saw the same thing happen, but perhaps to an even larger degree. Most media stations called Al Gore the winner of Florida long before the polls were even closed. We all know what happened in Florida and who won it. But this is a classic example, gone wrong, of the media calling a winner early on.
The bottom line is – don’t always trust exit polls. They can be very misleading and sometimes flat out wrong – as we saw in 2000. Exit polls are designed to assist us in determining who votes for whom and why, but lately the media has abused this useful tool. The media is beginning to have too much control over presidential elections in particular. Yes, each voter has the choice to come out and vote or not, but when the media plays at “well, the election is pretty much already wrapped up here” – why should people even bother to vote? It’d be nice for once in awhile for the media to back off a little and stop interfering so much in elections. They really have too much power. As we saw during the 2008 election, they tend to favor one candidate more than the other, and I’m worried that this bias will result in faulty polls to mislead voters to vote for the candidate they endorse.
Exit polls are often used to predict a winner before a winner is actually announced. This can create major problems. When a winner is predicted before the polls close, this may skew election turnout. For instance, say you live in California. On election day, you see that the exit polls are predicting the winner of a presidential election because of the votes cast on the east coast. Since California and the east coast of America have such a significant time zone change, you may think that because the polls on the east costs already closed and the “winner” was already announced that there is no incentive for you in California to vote, even though you may have hours left to do so. If every voter though this way, there would be no reason for persons on the west coast to vote because the east coast already determined the winner. When the media presents the exit polls as such we can see the problem clearly.
Exit polls during the 1980 and 2000 election clearly show the issues that can arise. During the 1980 presidential election, NBC declared Ronald Regan the winner early on in the night. Since NBC used their data from the east coast where it was 8:15 pm, persons on the west coast, where it was only 5:15 pm, showed up in much smaller numbers that was expected because NBC had already declared Regan the perceived winner. Obviously this prediction was correct, but this strategy is, as I see it, somewhat democratic. NBC has every right to use exit polls, but the way they present their findings seems shaky at best. I thought exit polls were used to scientifically measure demographics and voting trends – not ruin elections. NBC and others new stations should use caution when presenting their exit polling results because there will be millions of Americans who have not yet had the opportunity to vote, who deserve to have a say. In the end, it’s up to the individual voter to determine where they think their vote will count or not, but when the media plays such a large role in elections as they do nowadays, it makes it more difficult for voters to feel that their vote does truly count. If you were told that the election was already pretty much won by Obama – would you still vote for McCain?
Again, in the 2000 election we saw the same thing happen, but perhaps to an even larger degree. Most media stations called Al Gore the winner of Florida long before the polls were even closed. We all know what happened in Florida and who won it. But this is a classic example, gone wrong, of the media calling a winner early on.
The bottom line is – don’t always trust exit polls. They can be very misleading and sometimes flat out wrong – as we saw in 2000. Exit polls are designed to assist us in determining who votes for whom and why, but lately the media has abused this useful tool. The media is beginning to have too much control over presidential elections in particular. Yes, each voter has the choice to come out and vote or not, but when the media plays at “well, the election is pretty much already wrapped up here” – why should people even bother to vote? It’d be nice for once in awhile for the media to back off a little and stop interfering so much in elections. They really have too much power. As we saw during the 2008 election, they tend to favor one candidate more than the other, and I’m worried that this bias will result in faulty polls to mislead voters to vote for the candidate they endorse.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)