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Turnout in the Illinois primary — 23 Comments

  1. My lack of enthusiasm for the primaries is because …
    1) I don’t care for any of these candidates.
    2) I don’t care if the Republican candidate sacrifices babies to the dark-god Marduk, I am still voting for them come November.
    .
    However, realistically … my state has their primary too late to matter and my state is a lock for the Dems. So, my votes don’t count.

  2. momo: that’s an interesting combo, and I think it’s one shared by quite a few people this year. Indifference and lack of enthusiasm about the Republican candidates vis a vis each other, but a strong dedication to voting for the Republican nominee in the general.

  3. The spinning of the turnout numbers is another favorite tactic of the Romney-haters. Supposedly, low turnout means the GOP electorate is unenthusiastic — but only about ROMNEY. Of course, logic would suggest that if the GOP is unenthusiastic about Romney, it is even less enthusiastic about Santorum and Gingrich, since they are each getting fewer people to the polls than Mitt is.

    I actually am beginning to think that a lot of the Romney-hating we see in blog comments is part of a huge false-flag operation. I think liberal trolls may well be creating accounts and leaving comments all over the conservative blogosphere simply for the purposes of announcing that they won’t for Mitt if he’s the GOP nominee. They would love to sort of legitimize this position within the convervative fold in the hope of convincing maybe 5-10% of conservatives that withholding support for Romney is the sensible, “principled” thing to do this November.

  4. Just to elaborate a bit on my “false-flag” theory, it seems to me that the number of anonymous blog commenters who say they won’t vote if Mitt is the nominee is infinitely greater than the number of KNOWN conservatives who take that position. I’m actually not aware of any Republican bloggers, pundits, or activists who are so turned off by the prospect of Mitt as the nominee (or so seemingly indifferent to the prospect of a second term for Obama) that they have said they won’t support him if he wins the nomination. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of folks rooting for Santorum, Newt, or some new candidate to somehow overtake Romney. But when I read comments at sites like Legal Insurrection, etc., it is not uncommon at all to find two or three commenters saying that they’ll simply stay at home if Mitt is at the top of the ticket. If the idea of boycotting Mitt in November were as prevalent within the GOP as the comment threads suggest, I don’t understand why no well-known conservative seems to embrace it. And frankly, I’m having trouble seeing how a rational GOP voter could really arrive at the conclusion that Mitt is “just as bad” as Obama, or that Mitt somehow is so far to the left of Rick and Newt as to make it impossible to vote for him even against Obama. It just doesn’t add up.

  5. I went to see Romney in Lake County (north of Chicago) last Sunday. My wife is a Romney supporter and I was lukewarm at best. I was somewhat surprised to find Romney quite personable and down to earth in person. He didn’t come across as the stiff candidate that we see on TV. I was only about 20 feet from where he was speaking and observed his body language during the Q & A. Perhaps practice has made him better, or perhaps I’m easily fooled, but he seemed like a genuine person who really listened and responded to the questions. I went into the meeting ready to vote for Gingrich. And left with a Romney button, some yard signs and a decision to vote for Romney in the IL primary. The polling place on Tuesday was neither packed nor empty. I went about 9AM and found about 70% of the voting booths occupied but no line to get a ballot. About normal for our neck of the woods in a purple-ish northern Chicago suburb.

  6. I was going to attribute it to the fact that our vote never counts. But, since our turn-out was higher than reported, I think it has to be the ABO factor.

    One thing people don’t realize is that an awful lot of Dems register as Repubs here so that they can weak our candidates. But this election makes me wonder whether these wolves in sheep’s clothing may actually pull the R lever come November. One can only hope…

  7. I actually am beginning to think that a lot of the Romney-hating we see in blog comments is part of a huge false-flag operation.

    C’mon, Conrad, would the Reds try to manipulate the democratic (small “d”) process? That would be dishonest and underhanded.

  8. Neo-
    Your leadoff link was to my comment. So I got mislead by an IL Dem politician pretending objectivity. Who’da thunk it? I got sucked in.
    But you left off my close in your quote: ABO.

  9. Don Carlos: oh, I know; I wasn’t meaning to spotlight your decisions about voting. I was merely meaning to spotlight that most of us have been misled by the reports into thinking turnout on the Republican side was light. I would have thought it myself if I hadn’t come across information to the contrary, almost by chance.

  10. Great catch, Neo.

    It’s all about selecting which part of the picture to frame, and concealing the rest. I agree that it’s deliberate in this case.

  11. “Sometimes the report is “record low.” That would be a problem for Romney or the eventual nominee, whomever it might be, and would indicate a lack of voter enthusiasm on the part of the base.”

    As Conrad has noted, its bogus MSM BS. The ‘base’ is ABO.

  12. When you see the bag of tricks deployed by the MSM on a regular basis, who doubts a stated 41% approval of Obama isn’t really closer to 34%?

    Progressives all over are going down in a landslide and it will all be because of…..you guessed it……racismmmmm.

  13. Back when I lived in Crook County in The People’s Republic of Illinois it was common knowledge that IF you took a republican primary ballot you were moved to the top of the list for jury duty.

    Nobody told me so I learned the hard way but by then it was too late. I sat on a jury once a year for six years.

  14. I have developed a useful method for reading news which has not failed me for years now. When reading any story, one simply asks oneself: how does this serve liberal goals?

    Once you start, it’s impossible not to notice the bias, dishonesty, and loaded language they use.

  15. I know Nanny Bloomberg won’t like this, but I tend to take any reporting containg numbers and statistics with about a half shaker of salt. Pollers and reporters rarely give enough baseline info for you to judge their conclusions.

  16. I haven’t had occasion to vote in a primary this year, but until now I haven’t been able to support anyone. Why go to the polls when you haven’t made up your mind? I think the volatility during this primary season is largely due to the stakes being so high: we judge our candidates on whether or not they can beat Obama. Compared to that concern, everything pales in importance. I’ve wobbled over choosing a candidate, but no matter which one is the nominee, I’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for him.
    Trimegistus: Back when I was in a liberal bubble, I never noticed the bias because it just seemed to be the correct take on things. Once the bubble bursts though, you’re smack up against reality, like it or not. Naturally, one does come to prefer reality, and you can’t ever get inside the bubble again. Good thing, too, because I actually believe political correctness is bad for one’s mental health.

  17. Open primaries are ruining this country. The Dems rush into vote for the weakest candidate. I, as an Ind., did this several years ago in NC for John Edwards. Now he’s on his way to jail and I won’t get to vote for him anymore! I also did it during Operation Chaos 4 yrs. ago.
    John Eff-ing McCain won nearly all the Open Primay states 4 years ago. He should be the ‘Poster Child’ for banning them altogether. Better to have serious voters at the polls.

  18. It’s interesting you did the journalist’s work of comparing actual numbers (vs the so-called journalists). So this looks like a meme perpetuating itself: is it laziness or deliberate or some of both? It has the advantage of acting as a psyops against Obama’s opponents, or maybe it’s just wish fulfillment posing as knowledge.

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