Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Challenge Ahead
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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won in a landslide, got little more than a bare majority of the popular
vote and only 28 percent of the potential electorate.” Furthermore, he
adds, “exit polls found that voters backed Reagan less because they
shared his outlook than because they wanted an alternative to Carter.” A
New York Times/CBS poll found that only 11% of Reagan voters (hence,
3% of the electorate) chose him on grounds that “he’s a real
conservative,” and other studies showed that degree of liberalism
accounted for less than 1% of the loss of electoral support for House
Democrats. 40
Despite unprecedented efforts to bring out the vote, the 1984 returns
were similar. Registration increased substantially: by 20% in Texas, by
13% in California, etc. But actual voting increased by only 1%, to 53%
of the electorate. Again, Reagan’s stand on issues was a minor factor in
the vote. The percentage of his supporters who voted for him because he
was a “real conservative” went down to 4%. Since Reagan received just
under 30% of the electoral vote, this means that about 1% of the
electorate voted for a “real conservative.” Hardly a landslide victory for
“conservatism,” with one qualification: those whose voices matter did
prefer Reagan’s program, which benefits them in the short run at least.
In general, polls showed, issues of any sort were a marginal element
in the campaign. To the extent that they were, voters opposed Reagan.
A Harris poll reported that by 55 to 38 percent, voters said the country
would be worse off with a Republican-controlled Congress that would
pass Reagan’s proposed legislation. 41
Such results on voter participation and attitudes would have been
regarded as a disaster for the political system in other industrial
democracies.
A further reason to doubt the conventional wisdom, Vicente Navarro
points out, is that just a year and a half before the election, Reagan was
the most unpopular of the last five presidents, and even in 1984, nearly