The Spiral of Silence and Voting

Reading the chapter on the spiral of silence immediately reminded me of Bernie Sanders' campaign. In short, the amount of mass media coverage for the Hillary Clinton campaign surpassed that of the Bernie Sanders campaign, even when the Sanders campaign was winning states and had Bernie and Hillary neck and neck in the polls. It could be argued that we might have had a different Democratic candidate had the major news networks treated both candidates equally. It's unfortunate that the Sanders campaign had to run against the Clinton campaign as well, because many people had been expecting Hillary Clinton to run for president for years. Because this idea was in the minds of the majority of the American electorate, many felt that 'it was her time' even if their beliefs aligned with those of the Sanders campaign. I know that my own mother felt this way, but felt her vote was wasted if she voted for Bernie in the primaries because 'he had no chance of winning against Clinton.' If all of the people who had this opinion had voted for who they actually politically aligned with, things could have turned out differently.

The reading is absolutely correct when it says that "individuals who notice that their opinions are losing ground, will be inclined to adopt a more reserved attitude." In my mother's instance, this meant not voting during the Texas primary even when she was registered to vote. I'm positive that she was not the only voter to act this way. Primaries are especially important in swing states, but when you have many voters that simply don't turn up because they believe that their vote won't matter, you end up with a Donald Trump VS Hillary Clinton situation that we're currently deeply embedded in.