Campaign poster
Outdated campaign poster
With Election Day drawing closer and the primary elections under way, candidates running for public office are trying to get their names out to the public. In Fresh Meadows, Queens, storefronts are plastered with candidate’s posters that urge constituents to vote on September 15th. Some storefronts even have posters of opposing candidates running for the same office. It would be interesting to see whether the store owners actually advocate the candidates on the posters that they paste on their shop windows. After speaking with the owner of a deli, I learned that canvassers for the different candidates asked the store owner for permission to paste the poster, then pasted it of their own accord.
It would be interesting to see whether advocating for a candidate can actually benefit the business, and whether the prevalence of a candidate’s posters made a difference as to the distribution of votes in the area. The store owners’ passivity about the election raises doubts about the usefulness of the money spent on campaign materials. We can ask customers whether seeing these posters in their stores will alter their voting patterns.
The election results for the primary can be found here: http://www.vote.nyc.ny.us/results.html.