Dreams of a psephologist

Like every boy, I dreamed of being a psephologist when I grew up. I found out later that it is one of those niches where many might be called, but few are chosen. Needless to say, I was not one of those few, but still have enduring fascination with the political election process.
Okay, I will come clean. I was discouraged in my aim by the fact that everyone of my acquaintance thought that psephology was either a) an exotic sexual preference b) an obscure religion.
To my delight, I did discover that it was an interest, a passion, available to the ‘gentleman amateur’, although interest in things electoral still carries the perception of perversion.
That is a quick way of saying the impending, and wonderfully extended, vote fest in the USA will probably generate more than a few observations, in this blog, which are only marginally related to corruption.

The US federal electoral system is largely a mystery to me, sort of a psephologist’s ‘Karma Sutra’ in scope and weird details and arrangements. I can, from the outset, thank the Republican Party for simplifying the process somewhat, in that they seem to have found the key to registering votes many months ahead of e-day.
It is the mini-elections, a strange concept to me, that I will probably enjoy most, given early indications. News of these primary battles already has my saliva dripping obscenely.
Take this headline for example: Primary shakeout bodes ill for incumbents.
Okay, it was my headline, but the gist of the story is: Seventeen legislators, including the top two Senate leaders, were ousted Tuesday (May 16) in the biggest upheaval in a Keystone State primary in more than a quarter century.
Let’s put Joe Lieberman’s upcoming battle in Connecticut aside, I realize his case is different, and American’s deal out swift justice for those perceived to be traitors, political or otherwise.
The general, albeit early, trend of dumping incumbents raises questions in the mind of this observer. Is this where democracy actually occurs in the US federal system, or is it just ‘shuffling the deck chairs’ because voters can, or is a genuine exercise of democracy?
If primaries voters choose to dump their chosen parties incumbent, an obvious protest at something, will they throw their vote behind the usurper, switch parties along the process or simply not bother come November?

Throwing state races into the mix must present a high degree of confusion in the electorate. In civilized, Westminster type systems, elections for the various tiers of government are clearly separated.
The result of that separation is generally a sort of electoral schizophrenia, like in Australia with a conservative (Liberal) federal government and notionally leftist (Labor) state governments; or Britain where voters ten to punish the government of the day at the mid term municipal elections, as we recently witnessed.
I will be watching closely to determine if, when all the batter is thrown in one bowl, the buns come out of the oven uniform or reconstituted into their separate parts.
The Lieberman episode is throwing up one interesting observation on the efficacy of mixing elections in one pot. There should be a ‘battle royal’ in Connecticut to choose a successor to the corrupt (we managed linkage!) former governor Rowland.
By staging the big fight at the same time as the gubernatorial fight, promoters are failing to focus voter attention on the vital local bout. These are the primaries and already there is observable electoral overload.
I assume things well get even more difficult for the local support bouts as the major tussle, the presidential primaries, begin to bight.
I still hear the tired old catchphrase, “all politics is local.” I expect the big party steamrollers killed that notion off long ago. True there are pockets of resistance, pockets of special interests, but the ‘one size fits all’ campaign seems destined to swamp real local issues.