Voting against

Voting against

: Have we ever seen an election in which so many people are voting against rather than voting for a candidate? Sure, we’ve seen many when voters lament they’d rather vote for “none of the above.” We’ve seen a lack of enthusiasm. But how long has it been since we’ve seen this much antipathy toward each candidate in turn. The left has been in full anybody-but-Bush swing for months; MoveOn has made that its rallying cry; even the DNC put people on the street not to push voting for Kerry but to push voting against Bush. And similarly, on the right, we’ve seen an often vitriolic effort to get people to get out to vote against Kerry. This is not a campaign of what we used to call constructive criticism. It could be that these two candidates bring out the bile in us. Or it could just be that this is close, so people have more reason to fear the person they don’t like will win (though they could just as easily have the hope the person they do want will win). So here’s my question:

Is there a poll that indicates whether voters are more motivated by voting against a candidate rather than for a candidate?