Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying

I overheard on the television that 90 million people voted for the American Idol finalists this past week. I was sort of surprised seeing as though that there is only 330 million people in the US, that’s a pretty sizable chunk, almost 30%. I decided to put my recently acquired statistics skills to the test to compare the results of American Idol voter turnout and Federal Government voting turnout. Now, I know I am not supposed to assume, but let’s do it anyways. In 2005, there were 744K homeless people, roughly equating to .25% homeless rate in America. Assuming that population growth if fairly consistent, 783K are homeless in the US today. Subtract that off of the American population, and you are left with 310,808,072 US citizens with a roof over their heads.

Let’s take that number now and compare it to citizens with television and a telephone. This shouldn’t make much of a difference, but let’s do it anyways. 99% of Americans have at least one television, 75% still have landlines, and 91% have a cell phone. Take one percent off of the population for people without television, and you have 307,699,992 with at least one functioning television.

Now let’s take that number and apply the phone statistics to it. Actually, let’s not. There are way too many variables involved with that. If you want to, go ahead, but I want fairly accurate statistics that are valid enough for a seventeen year-old surfing the web. Now let’s do the statistics. for the past five decades, there has been an average voter turnout for federal elections, the ones that are every two years, of 47.5%. In 2010, there were 205,809,266 US citizens of voting age, meaning that 75% of all American can vote. Now apply the two percentages, and assuming that population, voter, and age growth are all consistent, 36% of all Americans vote in federal government elections.

Now let’s go back to the American Idol statistics of this past week. 90 million of the population with homes and functioning TVs deducts that 29.25% of these people voted on just this past week’s episode of American Idol.

Now just think about that for a second … think.

There is just a 6% difference between voting for the federal government and voting for pop culture. Not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but it sure as hell isn’t a good thing. I mean, there are waaaaaaaaayyyy too many variables for this to be 100% accurate: there is the opportunity for more than one vote per person in Amer Idol as opposed to the Feds, and the populations are not necessarily 100% proportional, but this still shows the overwhelming power of statistics. And more importantly, it shows how the interest in who is the best singer in America is almost just as important in who actually runs the country. But above all, I think that what can come out of this are the tiny statistics: the homeless, those without functioning televisions or telephones. The things we take for granted, not realizing how lucky we are. 30% of the people with these privileges vote for a singer, while only 36% of ALL AMERICANS vote for the guy who has the power to fix the problems like homelessness and lead an economy that allows people to sustain a consistent income so they can buy phones and televisions.

But still, American Idol is almost just as important as the President of the United States. That’s pretty fu*ked up.

‘Murrika!