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Voters Suffer Electoral Exhaustion

A point on which nobody's undecided: election has gone on long enough.

ByABC News
October 26, 2008, 5:50 PM

— -- With only nine days left until the country heads to the polls, some Americans are ready for the election season to be finished.

Today John McCain brought his campaign to Iowa. His 86th Iowa campaign stop. Democrat Barack Obama has held 177 campaign events in the Hawkeye state.

Campaign fatigue is an epidemic in Iowa and New Hampshire. But outbreaks have recently been reported in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, too.

As Obama likes to joke, since he announced his campaign in January of 2007, "babies have been born that are walking and talking by now."

Obama has repeated the line so often at campaign stops across the country that even the joke is old.

Together Obama and McCain have spent nearly a billion dollars so far. They've shaken more hands and held more babies than they can count.

But some Americans have had enough of this long election process.

"People are fed up with it, all this length of time it's taken. And maybe they won't vote. Maybe it's just I'm out of here-- I'm glad it's done," said Iowa voter Jack Sink.

Sink said, however, that he will vote in this election.

Said New Hampshire voter Kelly Larson: "I like the mute button. I've heard an awful lot."

The campaigns been going on so long that businesses have come and gone in New Hampshire. The Merrimack diner, which was an iconic New Hampshire primary stop, barely outlasted Hillary Clinton's candidacy.

Peter and Carol Aten of Exeter, N.H. were already complaining of campaign fatigue on Labor Day last year. "The primary season is just far too long," Peter told ABC News at the time.

Now, nearly 14 months later, they're even more sick of it.

"I think we're all going to be excited when the election is finally here and over," said Carol.

The hot summer days at the Iowa state fair seem like a distant memory, after a long cold winter of politics. The seasons have changed, the issues have changed, but the campaign goes on.

Although campaign fatigue is a bipartisan ailment, Democrats seem to be suffering less.