Don’t Vote out of Spite

I’m astonished by the number of people I run into who are planning on voting for someone they don’t really like in order for someone else not to win. They might have a favorite candidate in mind, but they are not voting for him because they are afraid he isn’t going to be able to beat their most hated candidate be him from the Republican party or the incumbent Barack Obama. This kind of mentality should not plague the Republican primary, since it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone has this mentality then sure enough, they will get what they are predicting will be the case. This mentality has been constantly enforced by the entire spectrum of the mainstream news media, but has been challenged by smaller online news websites. Take a look at Ron Paul or Rick Santorum, both of these candidates were shunned by the media but it turns out Ron Paul (who is not mentioned as a ‘top-tier’ candidate) has been getting the second most number of votes throughout the primaries (as of today 22.4%, behind Romney’s 34.4%) comfortably beating Gingrich’s 10.7% standing. Santorum was able to take Iowa by surprise, and currently has 14.4% of the primary votes so far. Looking at the statistics the real top-tier candidates have been Romney, Paul and Santorum (not Gingrich). Take a looks at news articles covering the election, and you will find Romney and Gingrich disproportionally mentioned all over – this is probably because Obama is their favorite and in my opinion Obama will beat either of these candidates based on their overly hawkish attitude on foreign policy and their backgrounds which make them out of touch with most Americans. If one of the candidates above is your favorite then by all means vote for them, but don’t vote for someone because the media tells you they can’t win.