Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Voting early and often

Cindy Sheehan has given up her anti-war crusade and tells us that her son Casey "died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives."

Could be she's right. The May 23 finale of American Idol attracted 30.7 million viewers. The 2006 mid-term elections? 76,228,938 voters, a turn-out of 36.8%. Of course, many of those watching American Idol are under 18. In a 2003 survey of 526 "tweens" (used here to mean kids 8-14), about half of them had watched American Idol. Variety reports that although American Idol's ratings are down 20% since last year, it's still the top show in the 18-24 age demographic.
The lengthy finale of Fox's "American Idol" dominated the final night of the television season despite coming in down about 20% vs. a year ago, while ABC's season-ender of "Lost" was also down vs. its close of a year ago but was a strong No. 2 for the night.According to preliminary nationals from Nielsen, "American Idol" is expected to average roughly an 11.5 rating/31 share in adults 18-49 and 30.4 million viewers overall for its finale from 8 to 10:09 p.m., down from the 14.2/35 in the demo and 36.4 million viewers overall when the finale was contained to 124 minutes.
Of course, what's telling is that with a viewership of 30.7 million viewers, the number of votes for this year's finale of AI was 74 million. That's a high turnout even by Chicago standards.

5 comments:

Michael D. said...

Of course, what's telling is that with a viewership of 30.7 million viewers, the number of votes for this year's finale of AI was 74 million. That's a high turnout even by Chicago standards.

That's nothing. We in Louisiana specialize in granting the right to vote to as many people as possible, including granting it to people several times, granting it to underage voters, and especially the deceased whom we feel should not be deprived of the right to vote along with their life. So in LA, we can easily make 30 million turn into 74 million no sweat.

Anonymous said...

An old acquaintance used to say that she never worried much about low voter turnout in that 18-24 demographic that seems to be more interested in American Idol than politics. She took self-selection out of the voting process as evidence of insufficient maturity to justify participation. If the ill-qualified chose not to vote, then the system was working.

PB said...

Maybe the 08 election should just use a phone system to collect the votes. Each candidate could have 3 numbers and we could just call them all day to place our votes?

mrsdarwin said...

But then how could we write in candidates like Mickey Mouse?

CMinor said...

Or Pat Paulsen? I was so disappointed when his perennial Presidential campaigns ended at his demise! Suddenly I had to take it all seriously.