American voters may have shrugged off a surprise appearance by Osama bin Laden, but one day ahead of the United States presidential election, daily newspapers conveyed a general pessimism about the election, no matter who wins.
With final opinion polls searching for any late shift in voter sentiment, neither candidate was seen as breaking out of a suffocating deadlock ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
But coverage across the country portrayed entrenched partisan divisions, anxiety about the vote’s integrity and dread should the opposing candidate win.
The 2000 election and new charges of voter disenfranchisement in Ohio and Florida have ”poisoned the view of many Americans about the election system”, The New York Times said in coverage of its most recent poll.
A majority of voters surveyed said they were concerned their votes would not be counted properly; one-third said they would likely encounter problems at the polling booth.
The finding was most striking among African-Americans, whose ballots were thrown out in disproportionate numbers during the Florida election debacle in 2000.
”Nearly 80% of black respondents said they expected that some states would make a deliberate effort to prevent them from voting tomorrow,” the Times said.
And the Times found that neither candidate could expect a post-election honeymoon period.
About 52% said they were ”scared” or ”concerned” about what President George Bush would do if re-elected, and 54% said the same when asked about a John Kerry presidency.
Straggler polls searching for late shifts in voter sentiment showed contradictory movement within a tiny margin, confirming once again that the race is a dead heat.
Bush’s job-approval rating has slipped to 48%, according to USA Today, below the 50% threshold seen as critical for incumbent presidents hoping to keep their job.
But New York Times poll respondents sent Bush’s approval rating up 5% to 49% over the past two weeks.
Bin Laden, by contrast, got a clear thumbs-down from American voters, who apparently shrugged off his menacing message that US security is in their hands.
A robust 62% of 1 014 voters surveyed by NBC and The Wall Street Journal said the videotape of the terror mastermind aired on Friday ”does not make a difference either way” in their voting intentions.
Twenty-four percent said it made them more inclined to vote for Bush, and 12% said it swayed them toward Kerry.
While most US newspapers have already issued their presidential endorsements, two final pronouncements on Monday merely echoed the partisan divide.
The Los Angeles Times, the flagship paper of strongly Democratic California, carried an editorial on Monday entitled ”A failed presidency”, which excoriated Bush without actually endorsing his opponent.
While the Los Angeles Times traditionally declines to back presidential candidates, the editorial made its feelings clear.
”If elections were solely a job performance review, President George Bush would lose in a landslide,” the daily said.
Unlike his father — a better president, the Los Angeles Times says, who was run out of office after one term — Bush may be re-elected ”because he is a more effective campaigner than his risk-averse, and Kerry is no Bill Clinton”.
Across the country, the archly conservative Washington Times reissued its ringing endorsement of the Republican president and described the US as ”mortally threatened and deeply divided”.
”We are divided not only by party affiliation, but by different visions of the nature of the threat and the means of defeating it. Each candidate embodies in his personality and public presentation these conflicting visions,” the Washington Times said.
According to the media trade publication Editor and Publisher, Kerry leads Bush 208 to 169 in terms of newspaper endorsements.
By Sunday, 16 papers had gone neutral since endorsing Bush’s 2000 bid for the presidency, declining to endorse either candidate this time around. Seven that endorsed Democrat Al Gore in 2000 moved to Bush’s corner.
Kerry, on the other hand, picked up endorsements from 43 papers that supported Bush in 2000, Editor and Publisher noted. — Sapa-AFP
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