American Voters: Plenty of Opinions, but Without a Clue
American Voters: Plenty of Opinions, but Without a Clue -
With a day to go until the presidential election, taking stock of just how (ill) informed American voters are.
Those who skipped this election cycle’s presidential debates to watch Monday Night Football or, ahem, Gossip Girl reruns missed quite the show. In addition to the usual cavalcade of dubious facts and figures—Mitt Romney wants to increase military spending by $2 trillion! Barack Obama promised us 5.4 percent unemployment!—there was talk of Sesame Street’s Big Bird, “binders full of women,” horses and bayonets, and Syria, Iran’s “route to the sea.” Throughout October, some 60 million Americans tuned in each week to watch the political boxing matches, hoping for a knockout display of wit and intellect, or at least something to Tweet about.
With cable, the networks, and the Web given over to wall-to-wall campaign coverage, and with less than 24 hours remaining before the election, we American voters have got all our facts straight by now—right?