Via Jerome Armstrong, Charles Franklin makes a chart, comparing the number of people who tell Pew they’re following the president campaign “very closely” to what’s been seen in earlier cycles.
As you can see, the level of interest in the 2008 race is unprecedentedly high. I note that while public interest in politics seems like a good thing, it’s probably an indicator of bad conditions in the country. Citizens seemed bored by the 1996 and 2000 campaigns that, not coincidentally, occurred during times of peace, prosperity, and good government. Bush’s terribleness, by contrast, seems to be sparking a resurgence of interest in democracy greater even than what the poor economic conditions of the ’92 campaign could achieve.
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