We see the same thing in differing light.
I see rabid partisanship and extremist policy as the cause to lower voter turnouts. The apathy towards public good and desire to enact insane laws demonstrated by our politicians result in low numbers of voters because most people see the system as broken and don’t want to participate in it any longer.
Did I claim that? No. I only pointed out that the graph shows data which can be interpreted in many ways. The problem with that sort of data presentation is that it is quite narrowly defined and it does nothing to take in to account the reality of the situation which is a result of the net effect of hundreds if not thousands or millions of other factors leading to the resulting data set.
For example, simply the way the data is presented is misleading. The data points span multiple years and do not show the actual trend lines only the totals post presidential term. Jobs in one sector could slowly fall during one presidency and slowly rise in another without regard to policy. Since it only shows the number of jobs created and not the number eliminated, we may simply be seeing the closure of one department and the opening of another. We could also be seeing a data point where it appears the number of public sector jobs created seems high but during that same time the number of eliminated public sector jobs may be higher leading to a net loss of public sector jobs but since the graph only shows creation, there would be no way to see that.
To say that the graph present represents reality outside a narrowly defined set of criteria… now that’s specious. Which is to say it all looks very reasonable but in reality it’s incomplete and wrong.
But you see, that graph wonderfully illustrates my point. Instead of looking at the system as a whole and trying to determine the real root cause of the data, partisanship and decisiveness lead to these meaningless cherry picked charts that only serve to reinforce someones already existing beliefs and do nothing to add to the rational discourse. They are designed to prove a point. A point that was determined before the chart was even created.
