Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

Yes, voting actually matters

Diane asks…

So you still believe that voting actually matters?
LMAO

To which, I believe I must respond. Of course I still believe that voting actually matters, even if there are some that find the concept so hilarious that they're busy laughing their posteriors off. What else has been the theme of so many of my major posts recently?

For evidence that voting matters, I refer you to the last two Presidential elections, and to the results of the “battleground poll” for the last six years. In 2000, George W. Bush was elected President of the United States, although he did not win a majority of the popular vote (and no, the popular vote doesn't mean anything with regard to the Presidential election). Contrary to popular belief, Al Gore did not win the majority of the popular vote either, but he did win a plurality. In 2004, George W. Bush did win a majority of the popular vote, but only just barely.

Now, I don't know what the results of the battleground poll were in 2000, or even if the poll was being conducted then, but I do know that in every sampling for the past six years, when people were asked if they were conservative, liberal, or moderate, the overwhelming majority (roughly sixty percent in every case) claimed to be conservative, while a clear minority (from thirty-six to thirty-eight percent) claimed to be liberal. When you consider that, it should be clear that liberals believe that voting matters, and in larger numbers than conservatives do.

We've been told for the last eight years by the major media that the American people are polarized, and that we're evenly divided between liberals and conservatives, but the battleground poll tells us otherwise. While it tells us that roughly three out of five people identify themselves as conservative, and just under two in five identify as liberal, I believe that what it really tells us is that altogether too many conservatives are complacent about voting. In fact, if the battleground polls are right, roughly one in three conservatives doesn't bother to vote at all!

In 2006, the Democratic party took over control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In many of the races that the Democrats took seats from Republicans they ousted liberal Republicans by running new candidates that asserted positions to the right of their opponents. Where the Democrats ran someone more liberal than the incumbent, they didn't do so well. Joe Lieberman ought to be a good example of that. In the Democratic primary, the party picked a new candidate who ran to the left of Lieberman's position in the global war on terror. We saw the results of that. Even though Joe Lieberman is a social liberal and still caucuses with the Democratic party, he won re-election, this time as an independent. Conservative Democrats and moderates voted to retain him in office. Somehow I don't think that incumbency was the only reason for his victory.

One factor in the 2006 elections was conservative disgust with the big government tax-and-spend attitudes that had infected the Republican party. I'm fairly certain that this repressed conservative turnout at the polls. Liberals, whose political ideology tends toward activism in the first place continued to turn out in higher percentages ensuring a Democratic victory.

This year, the Republicans stand to lose much more ground in the House and the Senate. More Republicans are retiring from office this year than Democrats, leaving more Republican seats open to contest than Democratic seats. Predictions have been running that the Democrats may gain enough seats in the Senate to achieve a filibuster proof majority. There's only one way that is going to happen. Liberals are going to have to turn out to vote in greater numbers than conservatives.

We've already got evidence of the complacency of conservatives. Assuming a 100% liberal turnout, which is quite optimistic considering the number of young voters in the liberal ranks and the notoriously low turnout among young voters, in order for a close, nearly 50-50 battle, roughly 33% of conservative voters have to stay home. Knowing that turnout is generally not even close to that, it's plain that quite a few more than one in every three conservatives have been staying home on election day for the last seven years.

Is it any wonder, with that sort of obvious complacency in the conservative ranks that politicians like John McCain make such blatant appeals to the left and to moderates (which comprise two to four percent of the electorate, according to the battleground poll)? It's been more than twenty years since a true conservative has run on true conservative principles, and he won in back to back landslides. Every successful Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan has run for office on a platform closer to the center, and none other than George H.W. Bush in 1988 has managed a majority of the popular vote until George W. Bush in 2004. “Conservatism” even won in 1992, with George H.W. Bush receiving 37.4% of the popular vote and Ross Perot receiving 18.8%, for a combined total of 56.2% of the total popular vote.

I think that that election was significant. Neither George H.W. Bush nor Ross Perot ran on truly conservative platforms, but together they consumed nearly all of the conservative vote. Perot's fiscal conservatism was offset by his pro-choice stance, and Bush had violated his famous “read my lips” pledge not to raise taxes. We saw then that a third party candidate might not have much chance to win an election, but could certainly serve as a spoiler. This only appears to make a serious difference though when the third party candidate runs to the right of center. Ralph Nader after all has never been much of a force in national elections (not for lack of trying).

John McCain's biggest popularity spike occurred after the Saddleback forum, when he gave his strongest appearance of conservatism. He's still not exactly popular with conservatives though. We know that he's more than just a “maverick”, he's a liberal in Republican clothing. Some of us are going to hold our noses and vote for him, simply to vote against Barack Obama or, should she manage to pull of the upset this week, Hillary Clinton. Others of us are going to vote for a third party candidate, quite possibly demonstrating that many conservative voters haven't learned the lessons of the past (ala 1992). A lot will depend on John McCain's choice of running mate.

Voting against a candidate isn't enough to motivate many people to vote. It certainly isn't enough to motivate people to vote for his or her primary opponent. Sadly, having a candidate like John McCain is likely to suppress conservative turnout at the polls. It's my fear that that will suppress the conservative vote for the House of Representatives too, as well as the conservative vote for those 35 Senate seats up for grabs. It's bad enough that a third of conservatives don't tend to vote in the first place. Complacency because of a poor Presidential candidate will probably make it worse.

The left isn't going to be complacent this year at the polls. The right can't depend on Hillary's supporters crossing the aisle to vote for John McCain either, even if a quarter of them claim to be ready to vote for him. The Presidential election isn't the only election that we need to concern ourselves with, and whether Hillary's supporters vote for McCain or not, you can bet that they'll vote for the Democratic candidates for the House and Senate.

Does voting matter? You're damned right it does, and if we don't want to see four to eight years of socialism ascendant, conservatives need to lose their complacency. We've already got 150 years of socialism to undo. This is no time for complacency!