You care about who is president...who keeps your workplace and elevators safe - not so much.
Before last week's election, there was a good deal of speculation about what the drop-off would be. How many more people who would vote in the presidential contest versus other races lower on the ballot, particularly in the Democratic primary?
After looking at some data from the State Board of Elections and the Guilford County BOE it's fair to say that there was some serious drop-off, although I found the ballot spots where it happened a bit surprising.
At both the county and state level, the presidential contest definitely was the draw. But at both the state and county levels, the race for governor was the second-biggest draw on the Democratic ballot. That was followed by the U.S. Senate race. Statewide, the drop-off from President to governor was 5 percent, versus U.S. Senate 15.5 percent.
In Guilford County, nearly 4,000 fewer people voted for U.S. Senate versus for Governor. That's despite the leading candidates in the senate race (Greensboro state Sen. Kay Hagan and Greensboro-native Jim Neal) having ties to Guilford County and the race appearing on the ballot ahead of the race for governor.
This bum-fuzzles me. I would think that the choice of who Democrats want to take on Sen. Dole would be pretty darned important to them. I'm not sure how to interpret this, although I'm betting if I talked to Dole's folks they'd say it's a sign that some Democrats are happy with the incumbent.
The only alternative I have at my fingertips involves advertising: Richard Moore and Bev Perdue were on the air a lot. Hagan was the only one of the U.S. Senate candidates on television and in nowhere near the rotation that Bev Perdue and Richard Moore were.
Among the partisan statewide races, the biggest dropoff on the Democratic side was between President and Labor Commissioner. Statewide, 376,425 - or 24 percent - fewer people voted for the state official responsible for inspecting elevators and amusement rides and enforcing workplace safety rules. Phhhhppttt...who needs to keep nails out of their skulls anyway.
In Guilford County, a lot of people went to considerable trouble to under-vote the down ballot races. You can tell because a total of 127,589 people voted in the Republican and Democratic presidential races. Then 122,000-plus voted in all the sales tax and bond referenda.
But only a total of 105,345 Democrats and Republicans voted for Lt. Governor, the #2 elected official in the state.
To roughly extrapolate, that means about 17,000 punched a button for president, and then leafed through several pages, leaving races like Lt. Gov. blank, before getting to the bonds.
What does this all mean? Several things, I think, some obvious:
- * Not all races caught the voting public's imagination equally.
- * All politics is local and the referenda are about as local as it gets.
- * Folks probably aren't sure what the people who hold the council of state offices do, much less the differences between the candidates.
- * There's probably an argument in here for eliminating some council of state offices, if one wanted to have it.
Your thoughts welcome at the comment link below.