Monthly Archives: November 2004

Nothing Compares…


Saturday afternoon, a member of the Gophers football traveling party looked around Camp Randall Stadium and asked, “How do you compete with this?”

He wasn’t talking about the Wisconsin football team, which proceeded to beat the Gophers 38-14.

He was talking about the Wisconsin football experience, which established a similar advantage over a college game at the Metrodome.

Jim Souhan: Setting just says college football

It’s so true, the atmosphere at the metrodome is just anemic. None of the fans seem to care about the game at all.

Now jump to Camp Randall and the fans are going nuts the whole game. Not to mention the vast majority stay for the 5th quarter (after the football game is over) just to watch the marching band screw around and play a bunch of songs.

Why can’t we have that atmosphere at the U? I know a lot of people say it’s the metrodome… that you just can’t get a crowd pumped up in there. But certainly Vikings games are wild and crazy.. so much for that hypothesis. It doesn’t help that the dome is so far from campus, but I think that the U tries their hardest to have enough shuttle busses to get students back and forth.

I think Minnesota fans just don’t care. And that makes me sad.

Anyway, enough directionless ranting, just read the article above. It has a slightly different view, but agrees with me in most accounts.

Election Statistics


In Ohio, Kerry won among young adults, but lost in every other age group. One-fourth of Ohio voters identified themselves as born-again Christians and they backed Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.

A sideline issue in the national presidential campaign, gay civil unions may have been a sleeper that hurt Kerry – who strongly supports that right – in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohioans expanded their law banning gay marriage, already considered the toughest in the country, with an even broader constitutional amendment against civil unions.

[…]

In Florida, Kerry again won only among voters under age 30. Six in 10 voters said Florida’s economy was in good shape, and they voted heavily for Bush. Voters also gave the edge to Bush’s handling of terrorism.

—Minnesota Public Radio: Kerry concedes; calls for national healing

Young Voters

Let me share some snippets from a MPR article on young voter turnout in Minnesota:

Unofficial counts suggest students turned out in significant numbers. The University of Minnesota Minneapolis campus had record turnout, 65 percent higher than in 2000. Overall in 2000, almost 400,000 18-29 year olds voted in Minnesota.

[…]

The man in charge of voter information at the U is Mike Dean. Throughout the day he trotted between the two polling places. He predicted record turnout early on. About 100 students were lined up at Coffman Union before the polls opened at 7 a.m.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he says. “Especially on a college campus, because quite honestly, a lot of students don’t get up early. They’re pretty much night owls. So for them to get up early is kind of unbelievable. But it also shows people’s passion about this election, and interest. I think that’s very exciting.”

[…]

Senior Scott Yilek, 21, says he voted for Kerry because he hasn’t been happy with President George Bush’s record over the past four years.

[…]

Student Mark Hoerr, 19, followed his parents lead when he cast his ballot for George W. Bush.

“I’m not that informed on politics. But just basically I thought he did a good job. My parents are more towards Bush, so they just kind of informed me and said that you know this is what he does, so I just kind of agreed with ‘em. He stands for less government,” he said.

—Minnesota Public Radio: What was the impact of young voters in Minnesota?

I think the last two lines really indicate what’s wrong with teenagers. If you are going to vote, you should at least take 10 minutes to learn the issues and think for yourself, not just blindly follow what mommy and daddy think you should do. Just my 2 cents.