November 2004

Election Watch

The major campaign theme that Karl Rove and the Bush campaign hammered home throughout the campaign was that John Kerry is a "flip-flopper" who lacked the strong qualities that the voters wanted. This strategy worked very well for the Republicans. Instead of just being a referendum on the incumbent, the vote was a referendum on the personality of the president and the presidential hopeful, ultimately hurting Senator Kerry.

Much has been said about the early exit polls and "what went wrong" with the early exit poll results. The early exit polls were not flawed. They were merely early. But given the global nature of technology now, especially with the Internet, and the intense interest in this election, people made assumptions about the election based on incomplete results that were not exactly representative. Exit polls released later in the day were much more accurately reflected in the final election results.

The president made significant gains in certain constituencies in this election, especially among women and Hispanics, the latter group granting Bush 44 percent of the vote, the highest ever for a Republican president. Among African-Americans and the Jewish population, he had a better showing than in 2000 but no significant gains in either case. Catholics, who historically vote for the winner, supported Bush with 51 percent of the vote, despite Kerry's Catholic affiliation.

The "revolt of the rednecks" or the "rollback of the enlightenment" that some have touted since Election Day has some merit, as the turnout of evangelical voters rose from 15 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2004, a change of nearly ten million votes. But, though moral issues played a large role in this election, the interpretation of their importance must be a cautious one.

In looking retrospectively at the Kerry campaign, one mantle that they never really exploited was the theme of "uniter, not divider." Bush ran on this in 2000 and by 2004, the country was more divided than ever. Kerry could have used this to his advantage but never did.

In an uncertain time of war people also put more emphasis on personal qualities. In particular, people were looking for a straight talker. The Republicans have several politicians who are straight talkers like John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Straight talkers are able to have broad, bipartisan appeal. As a Republican governor, Schwarzenegger has a 69 percent job approval rating in a state that still voted for Kerry. But when you compare Kerry's personal qualities to those of McCain and Schwarzenegger, you see that he just did not have that "straight talker" image.

On the Osama tape, the last minute video did not really have the impact that many anticipated. One-third of voters said that the tape was a very important factor in determining their vote--and a majority of those people voted for Kerry.

Norman J. Ornstein
AEI

Values issues took center stage this election, beating out the three issues that garnered much of the media attention: the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, and the economy. Eleven states, including key battleground states such as Ohio and Michigan, included gay marriage initiatives on their ballots, bringing values issues into sharp relief and increasing voter turnout.

"The dog that didn't bark" was the youth vote in this election; especially quiet was the male population under thirty. Augmenting MTV, a plethora of other organizations, operations, and celebrities (from Eminem to Howard Stern) joined the fight to get out the youth vote, to no avail. Registration, uncoupled from motivation, does not equal voter turnout.

This is an equation that the Republicans have mastered over the last ten years. Their extraordinary campaign to get out the vote materialized in this election, as both habitual and highly motivated voters went in droves to the polls, sparked in part by the gay marriage initiatives on the ballots.

This election highlighted the stability and parity of the American electorate, as anyone watching the news could gather from the lack of change from 2000. On the whole, there was no color mixing among states from their red or blue identification four years ago. The three exceptions of New Hampshire, New Mexico and Iowa do not signify a significant change.

The real change is apparent in a shift of the electorate, not a shift in state affiliation. Leading up to the election, it was clear that President Bush had an advantage in this arena, as Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida gained seats in the House, while Pennsylvania and New York, states leaning Democrat, lost two seats apiece. This population shift into red states is likely to continue.

The shifts witnessed in this election are likely to remain for some time, as redistricting and vulnerable Democratic seats will reinforce the Republican majority. To stop this trend, the Democrats would need an event rivaling the Great Depression to restore them to the status they enjoyed decades ago.

The modest Republican gains in the House were accompanied by more substantial gains in the Senate, but the actual voting makeup of the Senate probably has not changed significantly with a practical shift of only two votes in the conservative direction.

The president may also encounter division in his camp over foreign policy concerns and increased spending. The Democratic camp must also change, as minority leader Tom Daschle suffered a defeat to former representative John Thune. The Democratic heir-apparent is Harry Reid of Nevada. Reid should excel in this new role, given his ability to manipulate the rules and procedures to advantage the minority party.

Because of the margin of the popular vote, it cannot be surmised that Kerry's uneven campaign cost him the election. Every objective measure of an incumbent president said that President Bush probably should not have been reelected. Kerry ran a traditional challenger campaign and attempted to make the election a referendum on the president. Bush and his camp successfully led the focus and rhetoric in a different direction, prodding the electorate to cast its vote on leadership qualities and the war on terror. The traditional challenger's campaign that Kerry executed did not have this kind of appeal and ultimately faltered.

Karlyn H. Bowman
AEI

A word about the final pre-election polls: for the most part, they did a very good job. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press called it right on the nose, but several others were close.

As was mentioned throughout the election, the country is at a rare moment of partisan parity. Gallup looked at the results of 40,000 interviews taken in 2003 and found the country divided 45.5 percent Republican to 45.2 percent Democrat. This represents a significant gain for the GOP from a generation ago. On Election Day, the electorate was divided down the middle again, 37 to 37 percent. In the last several elections, Democrats had outnumbered Republicans ever so slightly.  

On ideological identification, most Americans called themselves moderates, but conservatives outnumbered liberals, 33 to 21 percent. Voter views on ideological identification do not look much different from the general population's views, which have not changed over the past thirty years. Although "Massachusetts liberal" may not have had the sting in 2000 that it had for Michael Dukakis in 1988, it contributed to Kerry's defeat.

In 1970, Ben Wattenberg and the late Dick Scammon wrote The Real Majority, a book that talked about what they called the "social issue." Today we call it the "values issue." We saw its importance not only in the exit polls, but also in many of the initiatives and referenda around the country. You could see it when Californians struck down loosening the "three strikes and you're out" law; Alaskans voted against legalizing marijuana; and when Berkeley, California, residents voted against legalizing prostitution. A number of observers have suggested that a big turnout of white evangelical Christians propelled the values issue to the top. They certainly may have contributed to it, but concern about moral values is not new, nor is it only tied to religion.
 
The exit poll consortium asked voters which issue mattered most to them. This is something they have done in all recent elections, but this year, the poll included the category "moral values." Twenty-two percent said it was the most important issue to them in casting their vote. It edged out all other issues the exit pollsters listed--the economy and jobs, cited by 20 percent; terrorism, cited by 19 percent; and Iraq, by 15 percent.

But there is another national exit poll done by the Los Angeles Times, which included "moral values" in its 2000 and 1996 national exit polls. In both years, it was the top issue for voters.

The values issue is much more than gay marriage. It is about crime, drugs, out-of-wedlock birth, the belief that American values are not as strong as they were in the past, and the belief that is harder to raise children in an increasingly crass culture.

Values issues have contributed to one of the big gaps in our politics--the marriage gap. Married voters, and especially married voters with children, look more Republican than single voters. September 11 may have produced "security moms," but married women, like married men, looked pretty Republican to begin with. The marriage gap is much larger than the gender gap.

Looking at key groups: Independents usually vote for the winner, but in this election, they broke just barely for Kerry. Catholics, another important swing group with a perfect record in recent elections, also broke for Bush. Jews gave Bush only a slightly larger share of their votes this year than in 2000. 

Gallup started tracking attitudes toward lowering the voting age in 1942 when Senator Jennings Randolph first proposed a constitutional amendment. In 1971, newly empowered with the legal right to vote, Gallup found that just thirty-four percent of this group had even registered to vote. On many occasions we have heard that the youth vote would make the difference. And each time, it has not happened. Despite high levels of interest in the 2004 campaign, young people's share of the electorate did not increase.

In terms of the big issues in this campaign, voters, like Americans, generally felt safer from terrorism. The electorate, like the country, was divided about the wisdom of the Iraq war and how well it is going. Voters who voted on this issue went overwhelmingly for Kerry. Fifty-four percent of voters thought the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism; they voted 80 to 19 percent for Bush. Those who said it was not part of the war on terror voted 11 to 88 percent for Kerry. Forty-six percent thought the economy was in excellent or good shape; they voted 86 percent for Bush. Fifty-two percent said it was not good or poor; they voted 80 percent for Kerry.

AEI research assistant Bryan O'Keefe and intern Deirdre Connelly prepared this summary.