LIMA — With 19 days left until the November election, both presidential candidates have pleaded their cases to American voters in three televised debates. However, as the campaigns now prepare for the final push for voters before Election Day, are voters getting dialed in or burned out?
Traditionally, viewership goes down for each successive presidential debate, and this year seems to be no exception as of Wednesday, as viewership dropped from 84 million viewers in the first debate to 66.5 million viewers in the second, according to the Nielson Company. Even as early as July, almost 60 percent of Americans felt worn out by election coverage, according to the Pew Research Center.
Jennifer Walton, chairwoman of the communications and media studies department at Ohio Northern University, noted that she has even seen ads for new television shows marketed as a form of escape from the negativity of the election.
“The negativity has become depressing,” she said. “If you haven’t been caught up in the reality show entertainment value of it, many people have become depressed at the state of the election, with attack after attack without any substance.”
Both chairmen for the Allen County Democratic and Republican Parties maintain, however, that this has not been the case and people in the area remain very invested in the election.
“There’s a lot of excitement going on,” Democratic Party chairman Jeff Rex said. “This is pulling everyone together, saying ‘We’ve got to make sure we get out and vote’ whenever [Trump] says the crazy stuff he says.”
“There has been no letdown in the excitement of people coming into the Victory Center,” Republican Party chairman Keith Cheney said. “They distributed over 200 more Trump signs today alone. It just has not stopped.”
Sophie Finlayson-Schueler, 26, has been on the phones and canvassing for the Clinton campaign, and while she said that the Democratic base is still very invested, she is still encountering undecided voters.
“I think some people can get overwhelmed by [the rhetoric] and just don’t know what to do,” she said.
Cole Wasson, 19, of McComb, started a Youth for Trump group at OSU-Lima, and he is still meeting a lot of invested voters.
“The people I meet with are still very engaged because they don’t know who they want yet,” he said. “There’s still information they’re trying to find.”
Visting the Lima Democratic campaign headquarters Wednesday, Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, had a message for voters feeling worn out by the election.
“There are simpler systems of government that don’t have any stress, and they’re called dictatorships,” he said. “Democracy is loud and it’s noisy, and people have differences of opinion and they share them, but that’s part of the beauty of our system.”
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