Margaret BauerIn the coming months, most attention from presidential campaigns will likely focus on the “battleground states”-states that political pundits do not consider safely held by either major party. Missouri, carrying eleven electoral votes, is fifth largest among the 17 battleground states. Washington University students, who have the option of registering as Missouri voters, may elect to register locally instead of in their home states in order to participate in a closer election.
Sophomore Veshal Malhotra plans to register to vote in Missouri instead of his solidly Republican home state of Oklahoma. He feels that his vote will be more valuable in a swing state.
“I think the fact that local voter registration efforts successfully target students here shows that the campus is looking forward to the election,” Malhotra said.
Junior Hiroki Motokubota sees the attitude on campus differently.
“I don’t know many people that are excited about voting, and we usually don’t talk about the election,” he said.
Motokubota explained that many people he knows feel that this presidential race is particularly distant.
“Many of my friends keep up on politics by television or the Internet, and although they know the general positions of the candidates, I think they have a difficult time grasping how it affects them directly,” he said.
College students as a demographic are characterized by historically low voter turnout.
At the national level, pundits often refer to Missouri as a bellwether for the rest of the country, as Missouri has gone for the eventual winner of every presidential election since 1900 except one. This predictive capacity is matched by no other state in the country.
In fact, Missouri accurately mirrors nationwide politics on several levels.ÿNumerically, there are almost the exact same number of Democratic voters as Republican, just as at the national level.
Missouri went for George W. Bush in the 2000 election by a small margin; Bush received 50 percent of the vote, while Gore received 47 percent.
While current polls show a close race between Bush and Kerry, some political pundits are predicting that Kerry will have a tough time taking the state in November.
Geographically, Missouri breaks down into Democratic-leaning enclaves around St. Louis and Kansas City and Republican-leaning rural areas between. Since the 2000 election, the population of the St. Louis and Kansas City areas has declined in relation to that of the rural areas, and the GOP currently controls both branches of the state legislature.
While many speculated that Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt was on Kerry’s short list of Vice Presidential hopefuls, the selection of South Carolina Senator John Edwards for that spot could make Kerry’s work in Missouri more difficult. Speculation regarding the vice presidential selection has often focused on the potential of a candidate to lock up a battleground state, as Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa might have done for his home state, for instance.
Some pundits question if Gephardt would have been of any help to Kerry in Missouri, however, as Gephardt ran from the comfortably Democratic Third Congressional District in St. Louis. Having never faced a statewide election, Gephardt is seen by some Missouri voters as a national, rather than Missouri, Democrat. In contrast to the national party, the Democratic Party in Missouri favors pro-life and pro-gun positions.
Gubernatorial race of importance in presidential race
Of the eleven gubernatorial elections to be held this November, the Missouri race-in which incumbent Democrat Bob Holden faces stiff competition from both within his own party as well as GOP Secretary of State Matt Blunt-could become the most watched nationally.
Political watchers are hoping that the tone of the gubernatorial race could give an indication of the state’s leaning in the presidential race. When Holden won narrowly in 2000, his victory represented the first time in 32 years that Missouri had not elected a governor of the same Party as the presidential candidate that carried the state.
“I would say it’s very important to Kerry’s success that I be successful,” Holden said in a recent ABC News report.
Republican lawmakers have often been in conflict with Holden during his tenure, overriding his veto three times last year. Before then, there had only been a total of three veto overrides in Missouri since the Civil War.
Holden is also facing hardships within his current campaign. The inability to implement his campaign platform has worked against him, and his leadership has also come under attack from within his own party.
State Auditor Claire McCaskill, the leading Democrat running against Holden in the primary, calls Holden’s leadership “disappointing” on her Web site (www.claireonline.com) and has also attacked Holden’s accountability and direction.
A late June poll of likely voters indicates a 51 percent to 39 percent lead for Holden over McCaskill in the primary race, with a margin of error of 4.7 percent.