Is it common to average Americans to be engaged with local politics?

6 comments

1. not really.

   community meetings are usually old people being mad about change of some kind. school board gets angry parents for various reasons. vast majority of community never attend, especially if they support whatever is being discussed.

   local elections follow national elections. most people vote party line, or heavily preference to one party outside a couple pet candidates.

2. Nope. I keep almost all my friends semi-informed. Except the journalists/organizers.

3. No, most Americans are pretty clueless when it comes to politics beyond what their chosen media source tells them to think.

   Even fewer Americans actually get involved.

   There are 330 million people in the US.

   Approximately 210 million are of voting age.

   Approximately 168 million of those of voting age are actually registered to vote.

   154 million of those voters voted in the last presidential election

   81 million voted for the winner.

   Typically presidential elections have the largest turnout, percentage wise. State and local elections have a lesser percentage of eligible voters turn out and participate.

4. No. Most people have no clue what’s going on at local levels, or even state levels. Part of that is local media does a horrible job and/or is dying. Local TV news doesn’t hit local politics as much as it does crime, feel good stories, and weather & traffic. Local newspaper have been dying or have died since the Internet became widespread.

   More people pay attention to or aware of the federal level or stuff that happens in larger states/locales, often through big-name national media that’s much more present—Fox, MSNBC, CNN, and major newspapers like NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, etc.

   People don’t know when the local elections are (if not paired with a major election), they don’t know the candidates for school boards, park districts, mayor and council, dogcatcher, the ballot issues, or they just don’t care. Which is a shame, since most people’s lives are affected much, much more by local and state policies and decisions, than by federal level stuff.

5. It’s not even that common to *vote* in local elections much less go to city council meetings and such. Turnout in my city for local elections was in the low teens iirc. Generally people only pay attention to these things when there’s a big story or scandal. I’d be surprised if most Americans could even name their mayor. If someone did anything more than show up to vote I would consider them very highly engaged.

6. I helped a friend run for state office. A state legislator. He had 3 competitors with 10x his funds.

   I ran the analysis and found the average number of voters and amount required to win. I got the voter list. We invested his campaign funds in good sneakers. He walked his district 2 times before the primary and another 3X before the general. Only to houses that were high propensity to vote in the future.

   He cleaned up.

   And the entire difference was less than 2000 voters.