Interest in election goes viral, as primary rivets people

[babylonsister]

x-post from eds. MODS! This has nothing to do with the candidates but how the country is perceiving what's going on. Thank you.


Interest in election goes viral, as primary rivets people
By Maria Puente, USA TODAY


There is no escaping the 2008 presidential election, not just for the candidates but for the rest of us, too. Any place where people loiter, on bar stools, in chat rooms and around water coolers, the hot topic is the campaign, even among citizens usually indifferent to politics.

Why? Because the presidential race is authentically electrifying — a wild, hang-on-Martha ride careening across the country with a compelling back story of historic candidates, back-from-the-dead revivals, roller-coaster changes and uncertainty about how it will all turn out.

"It has been a veritable treasure-trove of exciting news every step of the way," says Krista Grimmett, 41, a civilian employee of the Defense Department at Osan Air Base in South Korea. "We are Americans living abroad, and we are following this election with a tenacity usually reserved only for the Final Four during March Madness."

The primary race between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is so competitive, it has even barged into the online universe of the World of Warcraft game. Millions of players are supposed to be fighting dragons, raiding enemies and performing magical quests — not discussing superdelegates.

And yet over the past few weeks, WoW has been "teeming" with people gabbing about the election, says Sean Goldman, 36, a player from Van Nuys, Calif.

"Here we are, logging into a virtual world to escape the grip of the real world for a few hours, but this election has brought the real world closer to the virtual world," says Goldman, who was running a "heroic dungeon" (a more challenging level) with a pickup group of players recently when a break in the action led to an online conversation about supporting Obama. And the debate continued through the rest of the game.

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http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2008-04-01-election-interest_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip