One thing that stands out from watching the coverage of US election from my sick bed is just how much more enthusiastic the American public are for the Democratic process than us.
Our bunch of elected officials must look across the Atlantic and wonder why they can't be greeted with waving flags and highly charged, cheering supporters instead of having to make do with the odd window poster and a stage managed round of applause at their annual conventions.
One reason could be that the American public just care more. A glance at our 61% turnout for our last election in 2005 compared to Americas 89% in 2004 shows that they obviously do care.
Another reason could be that the American politicians seem to have more personality and glamour about them while ours tend to be void of any personality and drab in comparison.
The perfect example is the Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinski affair which included briefly disappearing cigars and stained dresses while here the most glitziest the John Mayor and Edwina Curry fling got was the revelation that he tucked his shirt into his Y-fronts.
Boris Johnstone is about as close as we have to a personality but he is well liked for being a bit of a clown, if he ever got within a hundred yards of a cabinet post the country would be in turmoil within ten minutes. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger made fun of his bumbling style of speaking during a link up between the Republican and Conservative Party's and that had to hurt.
George Galloway is always entertaining and can be relied upon to shake things up but nobody could demand half the enthusiasm the supporters of Obama or Clinton show and even Huckabee has his evangelical fans to cheer up a storm for him.
Not to say that US politicians are necessarily better than ours or i actually enjoy listening to Obama constantly pausing to allow the whooping and applause to erupt, therefore taking him 10 times longer to say his piece than it should, it just seems there voters are so much more enthusiastic and keen to show their support.
Maybe we can make it a more glamorous event next time we elect our Prime Minister. Although, just electing our Prime Minister would be start don't you agree Mr Brown?
5 comments:
I absolutely agree with you regarding how dull most of our politicians are... but I'm not sure where you got your statistic about the 2004 Presidential election from. It didn't tally with what I believe to be the truth, so I looked it up. The figure I found says it was just over 60%, which admittedly, was 6% higher than 2000, but which is still low by world standards.
http://elections.gmu.edu/Voter_Turnout_2004.htm
Here's an interesting figure too - country-by-country voter turnout averaged across all elections since 1945.
http://www.idea.int/vt/survey/voter_turnout_pop2.cfm
On this league table, the UK is in 55th place (with 74.9% turnout) and the USA is in 139th place (with 48.3%). So on average, historically, Americans actually vote in smaller numbers than does most of the rest of the world... (which makes it even more of a shame that they don't count all of them, eh Florida?).
Italy is top with 92.5%. Their government is elected with a relatively 'pure' form of proportional representation (with only 2% needed by any party in order to guarantee a place in parliament).
So, in Italy, it's well worth turning up and casting a vote. I'm not sure about the electoral system used in the Seychelles or Cambodia or Iceland, but I'd suspect that they have some sort of PR as well...
I always vote, whatever the election, but if someone in the UK says to me "I'm not going to vote because I already know who's going to win my constituency so what's the point?", then I don't argue too much. Our system sucks.
Galloway is a kick in the ass. His "pack of lies" speech was magnificent. Would love to be hearing more from him.
Woah! Are you way off. Those flags and banners and bands and all are not a spontaneous display of patriotic fervor, or unabashed support for The Candidate.
That's all very carefully crafted prop and staging, designed by masters who would make Goebbles cringe in embarrassment. It's all designed to create a buzz by painting The Candidate in the context of Red, White, & Blue! It's all a sham. A made-for-TV propaganda piece to implant a subliminal message that The Candidate is more patrioticer and a better American than the other guy.
And Monsieur Fromage is right about your stats. There is no way in hell there was an 89% voter turnout for any US election. We celebrate at cracking the 50% mark.
Ook ook
I got the US voting figures from the M2 presswire site that linked (supposedly) to the US Census Bureau. I admit i took it at face value and didn't check myself.
The figure i see now is 64% so a slap on the wrist to me for sloppy fact checking.
Let's face it, the British are stolidly reserved but love pomp while, in America, everything is run like a Hollywood spectacular and is full of glitz!
Pomp and glitz - spot the difference!
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