Senior Things, Paper, Judges

Confirming presentation dates with judges, hopefully will have that settled by the end of this week!

Getting details from another voter turnout report for 2012:
Only a little over half the voting age population voted in 2012 (57.5%), which was down from 2008 (62.3%).
This was despite the estimated $6 billion spent on campaigns and the 8 million person increase in the voting eligible population.
Additionally most of the high turnout that contributes to the average came from swing states, which combined with the lower turnout (some as little as 30-40%) from the other states lead to the little over half average.

Gaps between primary turnout in certain states certainly exist as well. New Hampshire’s position as the first state to hold its primary boosted its turnout to approximately 50% in 2008, putting it as much as 30 percentage points ahead of other states. Strangely, several studies have found that demographic representation is increasing in both primaries and caucuses, despite really low turnout in comparison to the general election. Therefore the problem is becoming one of disparate turnout between states, a problem that is only exacerbated in the issue of "swing states" in the general election.

A troubling hurdle when it comes to the nomination process is the lack of data. Many studies are available for demographic representation and turnout for every state when it comes to the general election, but data like that for primaries and caucuses is difficult to find, and for some reason a lot of it comes from really far back (1972). That reason is probably the importance of the primaries for the Democratic party in that year.

I also worked on my product paper today. Currently I am in the section that discusses the nomination process and its related reforms, so I am retrieving the important data from my folder in Google Drive.

Senior stuff to-do:
Buy yearbook
Send banquet pictures