Likely record Hamilton County turnout sparked by opposition to presidential candidates [photos]

Voters wait in line to cast their ballots during early voting at the Hamilton County Election Commission on Amnicola Highway on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Voters wait in line to cast their ballots during early voting at the Hamilton County Election Commission on Amnicola Highway on Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.

At long last, the presidential election is less than three weeks away, but the final lesson of this cycle may be that the most effective "get out the vote" campaign is simply running against someone voters dislike more than you.

This year's overall voter turnout in Hamilton County seems likely to surpass the high-water mark set in the 2008 election, but if any records are broken, it will have been made possible by the equally record-breaking unfavorability ratings of the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are more disliked than any candidates in recent history, and that distaste for major-party voters' options is showing up at the polls.

At every early voting location in Hamilton County on Thursday, voters on both sides of the aisle said their votes had been cast against the opposition rather than for their own candidate.

"I don't like Hillary," Ann Bodenhammer said plainly. "I think actions speak louder than words, and the Clintons' actions aren't worth a hill of beans."

Another Trump supporter, Beverly Rawson, echoed that sentiment and, rather than discussing Trump's policies, she focused on the problems she sees with a Clinton presidency.

"She's deceitful. I said from the beginning that if [Trump] could control his mouth it wouldn't be a competition," she said.

She also said she voted for Trump as a rejection of the Democratic ticket's stance on immigration.

"I really don't want any more Muslims moving in," Rawson said.

On the other side of the aisle, Charles Stoudemire said he voted for Clinton and was ready for the election to be over.

"I'm glad it's coming to an end, so the country can focus again on what's important," he said.

He said he's optimistic about the future of the nation because he "voted for Hillary Clinton," and explained he couldn't vote for Trump after the last several months.

"You never know what he's going to say," Stoudemire said.

Another Clinton voter, Mike Acuff, took a more aggressive stance on Trump.

"I think Trump is plain dangerous," he said.

For the first three days of early voting, which began Wednesday, Hamilton County elections programmer Nathan Foster said his office had recorded 16,858 ballots cast - a 6 percent increase over the presidential election in 2012.

He said a better comparison for voter turnout would probably be 2008, since open elections without an incumbent president tend to draw more interest, but 2016 is still poised to be the biggest yet.

"On day one, our turnout here actually exceeded the largest day we had, period, in 2012 for early voting," he said.

Foster said the last two days of early voting are usually the busiest, but that if turnout continues to be as high as it has been, three out of every four Hamilton County voters will have cast ballots when all is said and done.

"If we keep this momentum, it's definitely possible to reach 75 percent," he said.

Foster added that, in the last 30 days before the voter registration cutoff, the elections commission received more than 15,000 applications, half of which likely were new voters.

Local political science experts said the level of interest in this election isn't surprising, given the tone of the 2016 campaigns and the larger voting trends over the last several decades.

"It's sort of an interesting process, because this is not typical," said Dr. Amanda Wintersieck, a professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

"In recent elections, we have not had a majority of people coming out stating that their vote is a vote against a candidate and not a vote for a candidate."

She said voters now are more likely than ever to not consider alternative points of view and to think of the opposite party as villains. Social media platforms such as Facebook only encourage that behavior by filtering the content seen by users to fit their unique political biases, Wintersieck said.

"We're talking about the same issues with entirely different framing and priming within those issues," she said. "Conservatives are told one thing about [Clinton's] emails and liberals are told a completely different thing about [Clinton's] emails."

"We have allowed ourselves to become a part of this echo chamber in a way that has never existed before, and that's really bad for democratic discourse," Wintersieck said.

Negativity bias often elicits more interest in elections than anything else, she said. People are drawn more to negative news, images and stories than they are positive ones.

"This is the gawker effect," she said. "If you see a car accident on the side of the road, automatically everyone's head in the car turns to the accident and they stare at it as long as possible."

Her fellow political science professor at UTC, Dr. Jeremy Strickler, agreed with her, saying, "This is where politics has been headed the last few decades with increasing polarization."

For Strickler, some of the most interesting facets of this election will come after Nov. 8 as the Republican party in particular tries to find a way forward in a post-Trump landscape.

The question for Strickler is what will become of the Grand Old Party and the populist movement Trump kindled - whether it will splinter into multiple groups or simply pivot.

"Maybe there will be no breakaway from the Republican party, but we might see and probably will see some real self-reflection going on within the Republican party about where [it goes] from here," he said.

But while many voters are proudly trying to fend off their own visions of a partisan armageddon in November, some are simply throwing their hands up in frustration over the whole affair.

"When two presidential candidates won't even shake hands in a debate, what kind of message are we sending?" asked Dr. Leldon Nichols, who voted last week.

Still others look to the future and trust that things will be all right, not because of who will be sitting in the Oval Office for the next four years, but because of their faith in God.

"I think we'll be OK," said Misty, who asked that only her first name be used. With her 12-year-old son nearby, she stood outside the exit of her voting precinct and pointed to the sky.

"My trust is up there."

Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731. Follow on Twitter @emmettgienapp.

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