Quotes & Sayings About Electorate

Selection [of UN delegates] by governments cannot give the peoples of the world the feeling of being fairly and proportionately represented. The moral authority of the UN would be considerable enhanced if the delegates were elected directly by the people. Were they responsible to an electorate, they would have much more freedom to follow their consciences. — Albert Einstein

There are Americans will find it difficult to believe that the Prime Minister can simply impose candidates on ridings, and can so efficiently move individuals out of private life and into the Cabinet with virtually no resort to the electorate. — Stockwell Day

We have for the past year and undoubtedly will be for the next year, dealing with an electorate that is more alienated and more cynical than at any point in modern time. — Robert Teeter

Democracy is a daring concept - a hope that we'll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people. — Brian Eno

As neoliberalism wages war on public goods and the very idea of a public, including citizenship beyond membership, it dramatically thins public life without killing politics. Struggles remain over power, hegemonic values, resources, and future trajectories. This persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere, is part of what makes contemporary politics peculiarly unappealing and toxic - full of ranting and posturing, emptied of intellectual seriousness, pandering to an uneducated and manipulable electorate and a celebrity-and-scandal-hungry corporate media. Neoliberalism generates a condition of politics absent democratic institutions that would support a democratic public and all that such a public represents at its best: informed passion, respectful deliberation, aspirational sovereignty, sharp containment of powers that would overrule or undermine it. — Wendy Brown

As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people the underlying value of that which is traditional, that which is prescriptive. — Enoch Powell

I think the American electorate should work a little harder at getting informed. That includes hearing, truly listening, to what the other side is saying. Whether you're left or right. — Jeff Daniels

Self-professed conservatives comprise about 40% to 45% of the electorate. — Paul Weyrich

When the liberal comes before the electorate as a candidate for public office and is asked by those whose votes he solicits what he or his party intends to do for them and their group, the only answer he can give is: Liberalism serves everyone, but it serves no special interest.
To be a liberal is to have realized that a special privilege conceded to a small group to the disadvantage of others cannot, in the long run, be preserved without a fight (civil war): but that, on the other hand, one cannot bestow privileges on the majority, since these then cancel one another out in their value for those whom they are supposed to specially favor, and the only net result is a reduction in the productivity of social labor. — Ludwig Von Mises

Denis Healey refused to contribute an article to the 'Guardian' about his intentions, and was punished by the electorate - and then all Labour MPs - for his presumption in assuming they already knew everything about him. He became famously the best prime minister we never had. Perhaps. — Simon Hoggart

I think the Democratic electorate is similarly very energized. In both cycles we have new folks coming into the system who had previously been outside of the system, who may not even be Democrats. In both cycles we have a very well-known candidate who understands the process and a candidate who had to learn the rules. — Leah D. Daughtry

In 2012, those French Muslim people voted massively for Francois Hollande against Nicolas Sarkozy. With the results of elections getting even tighter, those votes can make the difference. I am obviously not in favour of a "community electorate," however, pressure is so great on them that I can easily understand how it can affect their votes. — Tariq Ramadan

The organization of American society is an interlocking system of semi-monopolies notoriously venal, an electorate notoriously unenlightened, misled by mass media notoriously phony. — Paul Goodman

Historically, it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance, inherent in democracy, of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats - and disgraces - and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasize the defects of the electorate already mentioned — Ernest J. King

I think a good MP is someone who cares for their community and becomes their champion, which is why I will make my home in any seat I am lucky enough to be selected for. Looks play no part in the equation, what matters is your ideas and connecting them to the electorate. — Adam Rickitt

Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay rights, and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion. After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those positions. — Stephen Kinzer

For the remainder of the gubernatorial campaign, Hamilton issued open letters to the electorate, and at Clinton campaign rallies his essays were hurled under the table as marks of contempt. In shaping his final appeal to voters, Hamilton said that Clinton's most effective tactic was to single out the rich for abuse, and he warned that republicans scapegoated the rich to their detriment: "There is no stronger sign of combinations unfriendly to the general good than when the partisans of those in power raise an indiscriminate cry against men of property."26 — Ron Chernow

The difference between a referendum and a plebiscite is a fine one. Both pertain to collective decisions made by the direct vote of all qualified adults. The referendum, which derives from Swiss practice, involves an issue that is provisionally determined in advance, but that is then 'referred' for a final decision by the whole electorate. This — Norman Davies

A charming eccentric, a piece of blank paper on which the electorate could write its message: You other guys are so wasted that we decided to elect this fool for two years instead. — Stephen King

I don't believe in democracy. In the second place, neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republican authoritarian republic with a limited electorate
just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about. — George Lincoln Rockwell

A portion of the electorate will always levitate toward the scratch and sniff candidate, granting them superficial appeasement without any substance. — T. Rafael Cimino

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way. — John Le Carre

I believe in operating in the big middle of the electorate and not being to the far right or the far left. I think you get so much more done. — Sam Reed

There's a reason [Donald]Trump and [Ted] Cruz are one and two and that they take nearly 50 percent of the Republican electorate away in these polls because there's real palpable anger out there and frustration and a feeling of betrayal. — Sean Hannity

Members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. — Albert Einstein

Hope is an abstract word. In fact, it is more than just a word; hope is an abstruse concept, meaning different things to each of us during different times and circumstances of our lives. Even politicians know its hold on the human mind, and the mind of the electorate. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president. — John Podhoretz

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy. — Brad Henry

Goodness knows the Republican electorate is a pretty narrow slice of the population. — David Price

When it came to the 2000 election, 84 percent of Ivy League faculty voted for Al Gore, 6 percent for Ralph Nader and 9 percent for George Bush. In the general electorate, the vote was split at 48 percent for Gore and Bush, and 3 percent for Nader. — Walter E. Williams

It is now widely believed (and, I think, correctly believed) that the survival of a nation under modern competitive conditions depends on broadening the electorate's competency in numerate matters. Numeracy — Garrett Hardin

We are an impatient culture and an impatient electorate. — Dick Couch

It's the ideology, stupid. Unless the long-term decline of moderates and rise of conservatives is reversed during the next two years, the ideological balance of the electorate in 2012 could look a lot like it did this year. — William Galston

The thing I notice first about such people is their wonderful Christian charity. What kind of an electorate could, term after term, vote in a man of such ill-informed bigotry as Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina? A man who has sneered: 'The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.'122 The answer, I suppose, is the kind of electorate that sees morality in narrowly religious terms and feels threatened by anybody who doesn't share the same absolutist faith. I — Richard Dawkins

Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate. — Felix Frankfurter

We're at the end of an era of failed leadership. We have been led by a divider [ Barack Obama] who has sliced and diced the electorate, pitting American against American for political purposes. — Rick Perry

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate. — Frank Herbert

There may be a sense in the electorate, especially among independents that President Obama has overreached in some ways. — Michael Fullilove

I think FoxNews ratings are a reliable guide to the attitudes of the American electorate. — Reese Schonfeld

It turns out the voter's lied. Just like the accusations that they always throw at hard-working public servants, the goddamned electorate turned out to be goddamned liars themselves. They said they respected hard work, commitment and moral courage. They said that the candidate's opponent had lost their vote the moment she gave up on reasoned discourse and calm authority. But when they went into the voting booths in their hundreds, and thousands, and tens of thousands, they'd thought, You know what, though, she's strong. She'd show them. — Naomi Alderman

The reactionary percentage of the electorate in these United States has been relatively constant since McCarthy's day; I'd estimate it as hovering around 30 percent. A minority, but one never all that enamored of the niceties of democracy - they see themselves as fighting for the survival of civilization, after all. — Rick Perlstein

The moment is ripe for an experienced businessman to talk practical, prudent economics to the electorate - which is why Mitt Romney's political fortunes are steadily being resurrected from the grave. — Camille Paglia

We can't tell an electorate ... when you have something like in excess of 300 million people without any access to electricity at all that you have to put a cap on this. — Ronen Sen

The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out - at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure. — B.H. Liddell Hart

I don't think it's at all weakening of the system if people with the same last name put themselves forward to the electorate, when their experiences, their character, and in my case, gender, may be different. — Hillary Clinton

Under a system in which no single question is submitted to the electorate for direct decision, an ardent minority for or against a particular measure may often count for more than an apathetic majority. — Patrick, Baron Devlin

The ultimate check against government tyranny is an informed electorate who will elect people who believe in limited government. I don't want to embrace the idea we want people to take to the streets with guns. I want people to go to the voting booth and check an out of control government by electing conservatives. — Lindsey Graham

The weakness in a model in which one assumes that the electorate gets what it needs from Bill Clinton is that our system doesn't institutionalize the oppositional voice, and one needs to be able to hear the exchange of the debate in order to create an informed electorate. — Kathleen Hall Jamieson

Remember, the political idea being expressed a year ago was that because the GOP interpreted its 1994 mandate as a call to budget-balancing austerity, the electorate would never give the White House to the GOP if its nominee was also a root-canal austerian. — Jude Wanniski

The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate. — Thomas Jefferson

Whether politicians are dealing with complex policy problems or trying to communicate with the electorate, it makes sense to establish a clear, long term narrative underpinned by forward-looking policies to deliver on its vision. — Anthony Albanese

Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate. — Herbert Hoover

He communicates authenticity to an electorate ravenous for it. — Frank Bruni

The country is only as strong as its journalism - that's the way democracies work. The higher the quality of the information, the better informed the electorate is and the better the government runs. — Scott Pelley

Look for a candidate who can do to the electorate what corporations are learning to do, so Government - or, better, Big Government, Big Brother, Intrusive Government - becomes the image against which this candidate defines himself. Though — David Foster Wallace

It is always tough to win every booth right across the electorate because there are different issues in different parts of the electorate. — Denis Napthine

A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. — Lyn Nofziger

A Harris poll I've seen says only 12 percent of the electorate names taxes as one of the most important issues facing the nation. Voters put tax cuts dead last, behind education, Social Security, health care, Medicare and poverty. — Lane Evans

I understand Twitter has become popular among politicians. This technology allows them to stay in perpetual contact with their constituents. The electorate now has instant information about what politicians have been up to. — P. J. O'Rourke

Ultimate authority in a global system remains with sovereigns. Governments will not have it any other way: politicians face instant rejection from their electorate if they allow transnational authorities to dictate terms. — Michael Ignatieff

When political and business leaders tell the public - any public - 'We don't trust you to make the right decision' - they prejudice that electorate against the very proposals they want it to accept and undermine public confidence in themselves. — Preston Manning

I want to work with Peter Robinson as first minister in a positive, constructive way and leave the elections to the electorate. — Martin McGuinness

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist — Shashi Tharoor

A vote transfers power from the electorate to a politician leaving a voter powerless. A vote deprives a voter to represent himself/herself in parliament and a voter is banned from participating in the proceedings of parliament. — David Ssembajjo

You have to give the electorate a tune they can whistle. — Enoch Powell

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian Party, like the personal fault of Senator Trowbridge, was that it represented integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky emotions, for the peppery sensations associated, usually, not with monetary systems and taxation rates but with baptism by immersion in the creek, young love under the elms, straight whisky, angelic orchestras heard soaring down from the full moon, fear of death when an automobile teeters above a canyon, thirst in a desert and quenching it with spring water - all the primitive sensations which they thought they found in the screaming of Buzz Windrip. * — Sinclair Lewis

I guess politicians can be excused for thinking the electorate is stupid because they keep winning reelection. If you were Barbara Boxer or Harry Reid and you kept being reelected, you'd have to think, 'Half of my state is stupid.' But then you wouldn't be smart enough to think that if you had their brains. — Rush Limbaugh

[T]he economy remains the top issue for the electorate. — Karl Rove

He was addicted to me
and now he has gone cold turkey.
He used to send me fifty texts a day.
And now he is ignoring me.
It's like I was once his Barack Obama.
And now I am John McCain,
conceding defeat like a sad-face sock puppet, knowing I have sold the best of myself.
He, my electorate,
not only does not want me,
he actively feels pity. — Emma Forrest

The essence of a democracy is a free electorate. — Arlen Specter

Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people's natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they - the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate - are themselves the government. — Robert Higgs

HST: Wasn't there a Harris Poll that showed that only 3 percent of the electorate considered the Watergate thing important?
McGovern: Yeah. That's right. Mistakes that we made seemed to be much more costly. I don't know why, but they were. I felt it at the time, that we were being hurt by every mistake we made, whereas the most horrendous kind of things on the other side somehow seemed to--because, I suppose, of the great prestige of the White House, the President's shrewdness in not showing himself to the press or the public--they were able to get away with things that we got pounded for. — Hunter S. Thompson

Self-professed liberals are only 15 to 20% of the electorate. — Paul Weyrich

Hamilton wanted to lead the electorate and provide expert opinion instead of consulting popular opinion. He took tough, uncompromising stands and gloried in abstruse ideas in a political culture that pined for greater simplicity. Alexander Hamilton triumphed as a doer and thinker, not as a leader of the average voter. He was simply too unashamedly brainy to appeal to the masses. Fisher Ames observed of Hamilton that the common people don't want leaders 'whom they see elevated by nature and education so far above their heads. — Ron Chernow

But it would be broadcast, and in the great public theatre of his age; that unregulated market of braying narcissists, that Wild West of disinformation and fraud, that infinite sea of piracy, the great electorate where the constituency of billions voted their approval with a click of a mouse. The internet. It brought governments down and rewrote history ... — Adam Nevill

That raised an issue still familiar in modern electoral systems. Are Members of Parliament, for example, to be seen as delegates of the voters, bound to follow the will of their electorate? Or are they representatives, elected to exercise their own judgement in the changing circumstances of government? This was the first time, so far as we know, that this question had been explicitly raised in Rome, and it was no more easily answered then than it is now. — Mary Beard

I don't believe we shall ever again have any form of society in which men will be free. One should not hope for it. One should not hope for anything. Hope is invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist. — James Lee Burke

Just like any electorate, they delighted in making candidates for their favors sweat. — Tom Holland

Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we're less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people's political views. — David Mamet

The Tea Party movement itself is maybe 15, 20 percent of the electorate. It's relatively affluent, white, nativist. You know, it has rather traditional nativist streaks to it. But what is much more important, I think, is the - is its outrage. — Noam Chomsky

What the visual media could not carry into living rooms, the general public could not long remain exercised about.
Statistically, a majority of the electorate could not or did not read complicated issues;
no pictures, no news; no news, no event; no great sympathy on the part of the public nor sustained interest from the media: safe politics for the Company. — C.J. Cherryh

Representative democracy frequently manifests a disconnect between parliamentarians and the people, so that parliamentarians have agendas that do not correspond with the wishes of the electorate. This has led in many countries to apathy, cynicism and large-scale absenteeism in elections. What is needed is not only parliaments, but parliamentarians who genuinely represent the wishes of the electorate. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

The exit polls suggest that after a relatively disappointing first term, Obama managed to reassemble almost all of his 2008 electorate. — John Podhoretz

The American system is a beautiful and durable thing, but flawed. I would like to think that this decadence is not sustainable, whether in the eyes of the electorate or the eyes of whatever the local economy is built on; that would bring me hope. — Mark Leibovich

National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account. — Al Franken

From a very selfish point of view, I'm enchanted by the idea that a politician can come along and speak simply and clearly and truthfully to an electorate as though they are grown-ups and to feel the electorate respond to that. — John Hodgman

My own electorate, which I represented for 36 years as an anti-apartheid politician, had a considerable number of Jewish voters supporting me throughout my career. — Helen Suzman

Whatever politicians, activists and manipulators propose, it is the phlegmatic, indifferent, ingrained electorate which disposes. — Don Aitkin

A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate. — Thomas Jefferson

Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs. — Winston Churchill

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment.

But 'fairness' is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed--the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. — David Mamet

I don't believe that knifing and that sort of terminology is applicable to myself, but I try to the very best of my ability to be as honest as I can with my colleagues and with the electorate at large. — Eric Abetz

Why, if economic freedom has proven itself time and time again to be the engine of prosperity, do we keep moving toward Big Government? Why is a pro-freedom agenda so hard to come by and to defend? Why, no matter the rhetoric, no matter the mood of the electorate, no matter how much the weight of Big Government pulls down economic progress, do we get more regulations, more government spending, less economic freedom? The answer might surprise you. It has to do with something we don't often talk about in explicit terms. It has to do with morality. — Yaron Brook

The politicians and the experts, who possess neither audacity nor imagination, reject every radical solution. They always prefer little solutions, tactical or rigged, compromises that please an electorate with cold feet, always respecting the status quo. — Guillaume Faye

New racial minorities now constitute a fresh and welcome presence in the suburbs and slow-growing rural areas as well as in big cities. They are a much-needed tonic for a labor force that would otherwise be starting to shrink. Furthermore, they will serve as a necessary conduit to other nations in today's increasingly globalized economy. The political clout of racial minorities, both new and old, was demonstrated in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections, and diversity within the electorate continues to increase more rapidly than most political strategists could have anticipated only a couple of election cycles ago. — William H. Frey

We have no one to blame for the Kennedys but ourselves. We took the Kennedys to heart of our own accord. And it is my opinion that we did it not because we respected them or thought what they proposed was good, but because they were pretty. We, the electorate, were smitten by this handsome, vivacious family ... We wanted to hug their golden tousled heads to our dumpy breasts. — P. J. O'Rourke

If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it. — Jim Lehrer

Romney and Democratic rival President Obama have led their partisan backers down a trail of lies, negativity and vacuous policies that seem certain to guarantee an angry electorate four more years of gridlock. — Ron Fournier