Voter turnout in US elections
On the basis of population the US is the third largest country of the world. Also, it is the second largest country practising democracy. But voter turnout in US elections is one of the poorest among the advanced industrial nations of the world. A little over 50 percent of the voting-age population take part in US presidential elections. There was plenty of euphoria in the recently held US election as many claimed a record voter turnout. This exuberance was primarily based on the observation that voters in many locations had to stand in long queues for hours, primarily arising out of shortage of polling centres. The arithmetic of voter turnout has indeed been a dismal one, not significantly different from those of the previous years. Based on a number of reliable sources available on the Internet, it appears that the voter turnout in the present election was around 122,457,990 out of a voting-age population of 231,229,580.
This produces 52.95 percent voter turnout indicating that nearly half the voting-age population (47.05 percent) abstained from voting. The president-elect Barack Obama secured 52.95 percent while his main opponent John McCain got 46.1 percent of the popular vote. The turnout of voting-age population was 53.5 percent in the previous election of 2004. It was only 49.1 percent in 1996. However, the voter turnout was comparatively better in 1960 (63.1 percent) when John F. Kennedy was elected. Since then it has declined considerably. It averaged around 62 percent in the 1960s. In the 1970s it was around 54 percent. During the last three decades it remains on an average of 52 percent. On the contrary , in many countries of continental Europe such as Germany and Sweden voter turnout remains high (over 80 percent). The US government does not waste any opportunity to behave as the moral mentor of the world preaching the virtues of democracy, sometimes using the barrels of the gun as it did in Iraq.
Ironically, almost half its population mock at the institution of democracy by keeping a safe distance from it and declining to take part in the electoral process.
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