The United States has become the all-voting, all-the-time nation. Furthermore, this is now taking several forms, from the traditional ballot casting and frontrunner polls, through casting off participants in TV reality shows, and on to the notion that certain kinds of gambling can be interpreted as a variety of voting.

Presidential and mid-term elections mean that the nation is always politically on edge. This doesn’t even touch on local mayoralty and County Finance campaigns. Several TV channels owe a good portion of their existence to being on high alert for developing news about some aspect of the elections that are held every second November.

CNN’s “The Situation Room”, with Wolf Blitzer, is wall-to-wall election coverage, when it isn’t focusing on the terrorist threat or the wars in trouble spots around the globe. This year has been an extreme example, with the Democratic primaries and caucuses extending from January through early summer.

Now the real contest is heating up, McCain versus Obama. The polls, conducted daily, have been in overdrive for months. Who is favoured by which demographic group on such-and-such a policy issue? Throw in a further ordering of respondents by astrological sign and whether or not the day is bright and sunny, but a full moon is expected later, and the results will be truly definitive.

Of course, voting patterns aren’t the only things being polled on a regular basis. There are polls about consumer confidence, business expectations, buying patterns, social/sexual behaviour and pretty much anything else that can be phrased as a question. Do you agree that this is a good idea? Check yes, no or maybe.

Many web sites include on-line polls as regular features. The same goes for daily TV news shows. The Internet, and by extension cell phones, make dissemination of polling questions and tabulation of the results extraordinarily easy. Again, you and I, as ordinary Joes, get to cast our votes on any and all issues about which we care to respond.

I’ll have more to say on this tomorrow.

Alex Carrick

Find Canadian construction-related economic articles in Canadian Construction Market News and in the Economic Outlook section of Daily Commercial News.

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