YOUR VOTE REALLY DOES MATTER

When people tell me they’re not voting, by far the most common reason I hear is, “I’m just one person – what difference does it make?”

Now, I can see why you might think that, but if everyone voted, there’s a good chance we’d have different political leadership right now.

Presidential Election

You may have seen this electoral college map of the 2016 election before. It’s what things would have looked like, if the people who did not vote had been represented by a candidate.

(All that gray is the candidate named “Did Not Vote”).

You may have noticed that in states where enough people voted to actually outweigh fictional candidate Did N. Vote, they generally picked Hillary over Trump.

Presidential Approval

Gallup and Rasmussen are two nationally recognized polling companies. They have each been tracking presidential approval ratings for decades.

The presidential approval rating in both charts below is as of 10/28/18. Notice anything different?

So Gallup says people disapprove of the president, and Rasmussen says they approve. How did these respected pollsters get such different results when they asked people if they approved of the job the president is doing?

We can never be absolutely certain but there is one thing which was different between the two - who they asked.

Gallup asked the American people what they thought.

Rasmussen asked the American people who are likely to vote what they thought.

Now, I know we don’t have a presidential election coming up next week, but we do have elections that are just as important. Congress. For some of us, Governors and Attorney Generals. You can disagree but I think it’s fair to extrapolate from those polls that people would vote for Congress along the lines of how they feel about the President. Midterm Elections are often called “A Referendum on the President“ for this reason. Looking at the data, it seems that if we all voted, we’d be ushering in a different set of politicians.

If you're new to voting, or just need a quick guide, I have a how-to article to assist you here:  http://bit.ly/votehelp2018

Sources:

Gallup Polls.  https://www.gallup.com/home.aspx  http://bit.ly/Gallup102818
Rasmussen Reports.  http://www.rasmussenreports.com/   http://bit.ly/rasmussen102818