{"id":14810,"date":"2016-05-24T02:46:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T02:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14810"},"modified":"2016-05-24T02:46:20","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T02:46:20","slug":"is-this-election-going-to-set-a-low-turnout-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14810","title":{"rendered":"Is this election going to set a low-turnout record?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Some months ago I mentioned to friends that I thought the 2016 election would produce a low-turnout result.<\/p>\n

My friends laughed me out of the proverbial room. Why? They were certain that if the major-party presidential nominees were going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump that they would energize their parties’ respective bases like no other candidate could do.<\/p>\n

Well, here we are. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee; Clinton hasn’t quite achieved presumptive status yet, but she’s going to be the Democratic nominee, just as she boasted the other day to CNN’s Chris Cuomo.<\/p>\n

What do I think now about the turnout?<\/p>\n

It’s going to be low. How do I know that? I don’t know<\/em> it.<\/p>\n

But the talk all around Pundit World centers on the high negative feelings that both candidates engender among voters. Trump polls about 70 percent unfavorable; Clinton’s unfavorable rating sits at around 60 percent.<\/p>\n

The previous low-turnout record belongs to President Bill Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, who ran against each other in 1996. Clinton won re-election that year with just 49 percent of eligible Americans actually voting that year. Clinton, of course, didn’t collect a majority that year, winning a healthy plurality, just as he did four years earlier; third-party candidate Ross Perot\u00a0sucked enough votes away to deny the president a majority.<\/p>\n

I have to agree with those who say that Clinton and Trump both are deeply wounded frontrunners. Trump’s failings are too numerous to mention; at every level one can mention, Trump is the most unfit major-party candidate ever to seek the presidency. Clinton’s been scrutinized carefully for more than two decades and she continues to suffer from this perception that she’s shifty and untrustworthy.<\/p>\n

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people say — either to me directly or to others — that they’re going to sit this one out. Republicans cannot vote for Clinton, even though they cannot stomach the idea of Trump carrying their party’s banner into battle.<\/p>\n

Democrats aren’t going to walk the plank in favor of Trump.<\/p>\n

Where do they turn? A third-party candidate still might emerge to capture the imagination of voters who are disgusted with the major parties’ selections.<\/p>\n

If no one emerges, well, this election is\u00a0looking as though it will\u00a0set a dubious record for non-involvement.<\/p>\n

Is that a mandate the winner will embrace?<\/p>\n\n

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Some months ago I mentioned to friends that I thought the 2016 election would produce a low-turnout result. My friends laughed me out of the proverbial room. Why? They were certain that if the major-party presidential nominees were going to be Hillary Rodham Clinton and Donald J. Trump that they would energize their parties’ respective … Continue reading Is this election going to set a low-turnout record?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[631,682,1043,1424,1549,2139,6248],"class_list":["post-14810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-bill-clinton","tag-bob-dole","tag-cnn","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-turnout","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-third-party-candidate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14810"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14815,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810\/revisions\/14815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}