Finally I learn the presidential popular vote—on the Web

The TV election coverage last night was, as in the 2004 election (see my first comment here), beyond infuriating, beyond disgraceful. There were almost no vote numbers provided, just pompous conventional wisdom emanating from the six- and seven-figure airhead sages, plus the constant use of distracting, souped-up, hyper-kinetic visual displays (far more overdone than in previous years) that presented zero useful information. As hard as this may be to believe, all last evening, I did not once hear or see national popular vote totals. And then of course the election of Obama was declared at the dot of 8 p.m. Pacific time, on the basis of exit polls in California, without a single vote in that state having been counted. In this late stage of managerialism, the media have almost literally taken over and replaced the actual election process. A friend watched the cable TV new shows much of today and said it was the same as last night: in the main area of the screen, bloviators bloviated about the grand meaning of it all, while, squeezed into a narrow bar at the bottom of the screen, various election results were displayed in rapidly changing, unreadably small print. Opinion sits on the throne, surrounded by perfumed courtiers, while ragged facts scurry in and out of the downstairs servants’ entrance. I don’t know how anyone could bear watching it. Am I out of step or something? What happened to the saying, I look within myself, and see mankind?

As much as any other development, this loss of interest in facts announces our decline as a civilization.

Anyway, this evening I finally searched the Web to get the national popular vote figures. Here they are:

Obama: 63,093,832
349 electoral

McCain: 55,851,014
162 electoral

Surprisingly the turnout for the two major candidates was less than in 2004:

Bush: 62,028,285
Kerry: 59,028,109

* * *

Here is my comment on the same problem (already linked above) from election night 2004:

My first thought as I turned on the tv at 8 p.m. eastern time was the same outrage and disgust I’ve felt in recent elections: they announce state results purely on the basis of exit polls, with no real vote numbers up on the board at all. I remember how much fun election night used to be. You’d watch the numbers in each state’s presidential election and other elections gradually increase through the evening, until a point was reached when the news organization would “call” that state for a candidate. All that is gone now. Now the anchorman guru simply pronounces from on high—without a single real vote being referred to—who the winner is. And since the result is not based on any real numbers, the job of reporter and interpreter of facts has changed into pseudo-philosopher of the electoral process, with endless amounts of pompous Rather/blather about nothing. I hate it. The genuine interest and fun and drama of election night has been destroyed by these leftist technocrats.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on November 2, 2004 8:18 PM

- end of initial entry -

November 6

Howard Sutherland writes:

Thank you for the link to the 2008 popular vote totals. The Infoplease total is incomplete, though, as it only shows the big party numbers. Have you seen anything reliable that shows how the small party candidates fared? I have not been able to find that.

Superb election coverage this year. On your part, not the media’s. Their performance has been so egregious and so biased throughout that your harsh criticisms—all justified—are, if anything, gentler than the media deserve.

LA replies:

I haven’t yet tried to find out small party figures.

Also, as another reader pointed out to me, the state popular vote numbers as well as the national popular numbers were lacking in the TV coverage. They gave each candidate’s percentage in each state, not popular votes. But at least they were giving state percentages. On the national level they gave neither popular votes nor percentages.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 05, 2008 08:51 PM | Send