In a 2005 paper, Markus Prior wrote,
the decreasing size of the news audience is not necessarily an indication of reduced political interest. Interest in politics may simply never have been as high as audience shares for evening news suggested. A combined market share for the three network newscasts of almost 90% takes on a different meaning if one considers that people had hardly any viewing alternatives. It was “politics by default” (Neuman 1996, 19), not politics by choice…. Avoiding politics will never again be as difficult as it was in the “golden age” of television.
Thanks to Clay Shirky for the pointer. The divide between politically engaged elites and what is called “the low-information voter” has been understood since a classic 1964 paper by Philip Converse. The Internet has made the elites more engaged (and perhaps more polarized), but the diversity of entertainment media makes it easier for the less-engaged to tune out. Note that it is the latter who are the “swing voters” who, in effect, determine electoral outcomes.
That’s not really true, unless you believe that choosing between the two candidates provided by the parties (what is done by swing voters) is more important than choosing who those two candidates are (which is done by the elites). Given the ideological distance between Obama and Romney, that’s a shaky assertion.
Now I don’t actually think this is bad! By elites determining who the candidates are, I’m not just talking about primary politics or using the party apparatus. It’s just the natural consequence of their voting algorithm being consistent and predictable. Given two candidates with different views, someone who is politically engaged will vote for the candidate whose views most closely match their own. Since the political parties know this, they calibrate their candidates and positions accordingly. The actual election is just a verification that the parties chose equally good candidates, and a bit of random noise. As long as party skill at selecting candidates is fairly even, you’d expect elite views to be represented well despite the actual election being mostly due to luck.
Natural side effect: when someone complains about their vote not counting because they see no difference between the two candidates, it is likely because their political views do not have much support. Since the parties can determine that these positions don’t have much support, they effectively “voted” and lost, just well before they actually handed in the ballot.
Elections are hardly the only case where the difference between first and second place is mostly luck, while being first out of all available options is mostly skill.
> Natural side effect: when someone complains about their vote not counting because they see no difference between the two candidates, it is likely because their political views do not have much support.
The existence of a non stop cradle to the grave barrage of propaganda for certain views, for example every television show preaching that children do not need fathers and that fathers are bad, would indicate that certain contrary views do in fact have substantial support.
Observe, for another example, that we never get a candidate in favor of closing the borders, despite the fact a clear majority favors closing the borders.