Why are American Elections so close while voter turnout is so low?

Question

Every Presidential Election for the last 40 years has been won or lost by a painful slim margin. These margins are even more painful when one considers how low the voter turnout is.

Here's some statistics. The Reagan landslide over Carter in 1980.

Reagan won by a little less then 10% of the popular vote. A little more than half of the voters turned up.

http://www.multied.com/elections/1980pop.html

Clinton's mandate for his first term?

He won with by a smidgen over 5% of the popular vote with 55% of the voters turning out for the election.

Why is this? Is it because Americans are too busy to vote?

Is it because the two party system fails to inspire anyone?

explore the site.. find me a real shut-out election in my life-time and win a prize. http://www.multied.com/elections/index.html

Answer 1

probably got your stats wrong as obama has a 7% lead

Answer 2

Voter turnout is a measure of the number of people who care to vote.  The rest don't have an opinion or like Thomas Sowell are contemptuous of the whole process.    It would be wrong to suggest that since only a minority of people vote that the government is not supported by the majority of Americans.  Many people just don't care what is happening in national or state and local politics, and considering the silliness that goes on, can you blame them?

Answer 3

I would call myself the average American. I have been a working man all my life, raising a family in jobs that paid a little over minimum pay, with only a moderate education. Most of the candidates that are offered by the parties are of the "good old boys club" of D.C. politics. We know they have no interest in what we want or need. Even though many of us feel we could do a better job, we listen to them tell us what we know are lies, about what they are going to do. We know that it's congress that does, and that's usually only for them and the big companies.

Some of us go to the polls and pick the lesser of the two evils and hope we can make it another four years. When things get bad, we go to war, the job market fails, unemployment rises, we blame whoever is in the White House.

When Reagan ran, we were upset over the Carter administration, so we elected an actor whose only qualifications were that he was once the president of the screen actors guild, and he turned out to be a fairly good choice.

I believe the main reason for low voter turnout is that we know it don't make a hill of beans who gets in, there ain't going to be much change, and no change for us.

The popular vote is a joke, because we do not elect a president, the electoral college does. If one would carry the majority of people by popular vote, one could still lose, so it is not a government of, by and for the people, it is by, for and of the electoral college and the political parties.

We may be under-educated by lawyer/doctor/politician standards but we ain't stupid.

Answer 4

voter turn out doesn't have any correlation with results

Most voters don't vote because they feel like their vote doesn't count. Elections are close because the nation is very divided.