PS: Political Snark
Aug. 16th, 2006 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bruortonCouldn't resist this one, when I saw in the news that a deceased candidate managed to garner 19% of the vote in Nevada's Republican primary for State Treasurer yesterday, despite signs at every polling place stating that she was dead.
I think it was the exact number, actually, that reminded me of a Bob Harris post over at This Modern World last fall (his links there are hilarious, if you need to kill some time) in which he notes that Dick Cheney's then-approval of 19% was well behind approval for cheating on your spouse, or the number of people who think aliens have contacted our government. Now, I believe the Veep's slipped slightly since then due to shooting a friend in the face or some such trivial nonsense, and Harris does note elsewhere that he's still ahead of the 10% who are willing to eat a rat on TV, but I think his central point still holds: once you pass 25% (heading down) you're really getting into the lunatic fringe.
I wouldn't have thought the threshold was so high, but I'm an optimist, so there you are: about one-fifth of NV voters yesterday voted for someone that -- even if they knew nothing else previously -- they were just told was dead. Go figure.
I think it was the exact number, actually, that reminded me of a Bob Harris post over at This Modern World last fall (his links there are hilarious, if you need to kill some time) in which he notes that Dick Cheney's then-approval of 19% was well behind approval for cheating on your spouse, or the number of people who think aliens have contacted our government. Now, I believe the Veep's slipped slightly since then due to shooting a friend in the face or some such trivial nonsense, and Harris does note elsewhere that he's still ahead of the 10% who are willing to eat a rat on TV, but I think his central point still holds: once you pass 25% (heading down) you're really getting into the lunatic fringe.
I wouldn't have thought the threshold was so high, but I'm an optimist, so there you are: about one-fifth of NV voters yesterday voted for someone that -- even if they knew nothing else previously -- they were just told was dead. Go figure.
