Political Question

Please don't make me come over there and force you to make your Scrabble move.

My theory is that the Republicans went out and got a hell of a lot more voters. I saw some reports in passing today that suggested that the newly registered voters in places like Ohio were tending to break for Bush rather than Kerry. From the CNN numbers it looks like there was some swapping (roughy twice the Dems defected to Bush than vice versa), which suggests that there may have been some of that, but not enough to make up the difference (if Kerry had pulled all 11% of defectors back in he could have made it up, but if he could have done that he probably wouldn't have needed them).

But does anyone know if the new voters went for Bush because they were ticked off at the left's behavior and didn't trust Kerry on security, or because they hate fags? Ditto with the defectors.

Before the vote, almost all political scientists believed that the higher the turnout, the better the prospects for Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites). That assumption was proved wrong as the Republicans managed to mobilize millions of new voters, a high proportion of them evangelical Christians.

I'm cynical so I would claim that suggests the latter. *shrug* However, I also think that is was less about issues and more about effectiveness in collecting new votes, where the Republican method apparently worked a hell of a lot better:

In the battleground states, Democratic turnout increased by 3.6 percentage points from 2000 while in other states it was 1.5 points higher. Republican turnout in battleground states grew by 4.4 percentage points and by 3.9 points elsewhere.

What are you quoting?

An article from Yahoo!'s Reuters feed. Sorry, Livejournal has been fuxored today so the version with the links didn't get posted where this one got posted twice. Then I got distracted.

cnn had a report on the exit polls showing that something like 80% of bush voters said that "moral issues" were the most important factor for them in this election
which is strange because before the election they reported that people planning to vote for bush said terrorism was their main issue
im too much in a hurry right now to find the links. maybe later.

Were these the same exit polls that showed Kerry winning in a landslide?

Also, I'm skeptical of CNN interpreting the polls to mean exactly what CNN would want them to mean.

im skeptical of any kind of poll, any kind of quantitative method for social research, but anyway this info didnt come until kerry had given it up. it wasnt something that they showed before ballots were all counted and before they had more complete exit polls. whether it's true or not, i assume that's why everyone is saying that middle americais evil

Can you point to an actual link for these numbers? That 80% figure doesn't pass a smell test.

Your theory is backed up by just about everyone I know who voted for Bush.

Same with everyone I know, but the people we know are hardly a representative sample.

It's much like the New York Times writers saying "I don't understand how Bush won. Everyone *I* know voted against him!"

Yeah, but everybody's too busy making polls trying to prove that Bush voters are idiots, and THAT was their reason for voting Bush, to make any polls that would actually be useful to the Democrats in their strategy sessions. I have a feeling that your #2 above was not a question on the exit polls...

Democrats should quit worrying about the reactionaries who voted Bush, and start worrying about the smart, thinking people who did not vote Kerry. Therefore, I think that the stuff people we know have to say is, or should be, important, even if not necessarily a representative sample :)

from JB

It's a mix of both. What the media don't understand is that 'moral values' encompasses lying, flip-flopping, bringing up someone's family, calling US troops 'war criminals', etc. I'm sure a lot of people picked the 'moral values' option since a lot of them don't trust John Kerry as a person (not to mention gay marriage, abortion, stem-cells, etc.)

In many ways, I view the anti-marriage amendments as a backlash by family-values types to the gay rights lobby using the court system to create public policy. Some of it's an issue of prejudice to be sure, but there's a lot more to it than that. A person could have voted for those amendments on the sole fact of not wanting to extend Federal subsidies for marriage to more people.

Going through the courts for marriage has been a tactical blunder of astronomical proportions for the gay rights movement when they should have proceeded more methodically on the state level for civil unions.

As mentioned above, there were a lot of people who said that "moral values" was the most important issue in their vote. Maybe that encompasses a wide range, but it's also likely to mean "Christianity." there are a lot of people whose lives are filled with Christianity. Even many who aren't born-again or evangelical still believe that their religion is under attack. Listen to Dr. Laura some time when she's just rambling on about what's wrong with this country, or check out afa.net. Trust me, they're out there. And they're not all in the red states.

There were constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in something like 11 or 12 states, and they were resoundingly approved in almost all the states (and I believe it did finally pass in Oregon as well). Now, maybe some of the people who voted to ban gay marriage voted for Kerry. But I suspect you'll find a LOT more correlation between those who voted for the amendments and those who voted for Bush. A majority of those who oppose gay marriage do so on a religious basis.

Moreover, the Republican Party seems to have come to focus more on social issues lately than fiscal. Ralph Reed, former head of the Moral Majority, is now a Republican campaign director.

So, I don't know if all that adds up to "evidence." Nor would I say that the religious right makes up all or even a majority of Republican voters. But I think you could say with a fair amount of certainty that the religious views of many voters had a strong impact on the final tally. Perhaps even enough to give Bush his 3 percent edge in the popular vote.

I am not saying that these people are evil and I certainly do not begrudge them their faith. But they do believe that religion should play a bigger part in government, and I couldn't more strongly disagree.

1. People didn't think they could trust Kerry on national security, which both swung moderates and fired up the base.
2. The noxious behavior of many of those on the left turned off moderate liberals and fired up the conservative base.

Undoubtedly both of those played a factor. It's only anecdotal evidence, but certainly my initial inclination is to do the opposite of whatever Sean Penn or any of the Baldwins tell me is the right thing to do. ("Nice going, F.A.G.") But I think the most simple explanation is that there are a lot more strongly faithful Protestant Christians in this country than there are rich, effeminate coastal liberals like me.

In James Q. Wilson's textbook on American Government (one of the most conservative), conservatives and populists (who favor socially conservative measures) outnumber liberals and libertarians (who oppose them). This gives the press some credibility on their read of the election.