When the polls close today in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the pundits will all be talking about the A-word.<\/p>\n
Anger.\u00a0 According to the dominant narrative of the 2010 mid-term elections, anger is the driving force, the change agent, that is nudging the pendulum of our politics.<\/p>\n
But the real numbers show that a very different A-word is just as powerful:\u00a0 Apathy.<\/p>\n
In most of the battlegrounds today — and likely again in November — turnout will almost certainly be incredibly low.<\/p>\n
I’ve been on a Google dive into the in-depth campaign coverage across the US and even in the most high-profile contests, involving tea party favorites like Rand Paul and progressive stars like Bill Halter, the vast majority of voters are expected to sit this one out.<\/p>\n
What that means, of course, is that the first A-listers — that small minority of folks who are angry as hell — will wield incredible power.<\/p>\n
The great, moderate middle of American values is generally silent, while the extremes fume and fuss.<\/p>\n
That’s why political types focus so much energy on ginning up voter passion and building elaborate Get Out The Vote efforts.<\/p>\n
In society write large, Apathy is probably much bigger force than Anger.\u00a0 But at the ballot box, the only people who count are the ones who show up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the polls close today in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, the pundits will all be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}