balderdash111

Very much a long, disorganized, verbal diarhea rant.

Thoughts?

We are bitterly disappointed that John Kerry lost the presidential election, and that the Republicans had such a strong showing overall.

Let's look at the facts:

**George Bush won the popular vote by roughly 3.5 million votes. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote by roughly 500,000 votes.

**Republicans won (and Democrats lost) 4 seats in the Senate (as of this writing, the Florida seat is still undecided, but leaning towards the Republicans, so this may soon be 5). That may not seem like much, but the practical effect is a change from a 2-3 vote divide (depending on how the one independent votes) to a 10-11 vote divide.

**Republicans picked up at least 4 votes in the House, stretching an already wide divide even wider.

Why?

Why have the Republicans been so successful in this election and others over the past ten years? Remember, with the exception of Clinton's re-election in 1996, the Republicans have been doing very well – taking control of the presidency, Congress and a healthy majority of governorships.

I have been asking friends and colleagues this question and the most frequent answers revolve around some common themes: fear (inspired by dishonest Republican fearmongering), voters being misled and lied to by the administration, voters not being informed about the issues and the facts, voters being closed-minded Bible thumping bigots, voters being stupid sheep, etc.

But I don’t buy any of those explanations. It’s too pat, too easy, too superior. Lots of smart people vote Republican as well, and they aren’t all Halliburton employees or otherwise financially motivated (e.g., by tax cuts for the rich). There are plenty of middle-American, well-educated people who consistently vote Republican. So what is going on?

Is America a conservative country?

Last night, Bob Novak, a conservative commentator and columnist, explained the results by saying that the United States is a conservative country and that the Democrats have not accepted that fact. At first, this seems like a logical conclusion. The Republican Party is now -- pretty much officially -- the conservative party. Yes, there are some token conservative Democrat politicians and there might be a liberal Republican politician still alive somewhere, but you don't see them very much unless they are trotted out by the other party. So that must mean the country has accepted the conservative ideology.

According to poll results, though, this is way off the mark. Roughly 33% of the population considers itself "conservative." By the same polls, roughly 20% of the country considers itself "liberal" and the remainder – roughly 40-45% of the country, identifies itself as "moderate."

Some polls allow finer points of analysis by allowing people to pick use a spectrum from "very liberal," "liberal," "moderate," etc., and these numbers more or less hold up. For example, I grabbed a handful of polls to put together this analysis, and, for the one I am looking at (which came from the Economist) if you combine "very liberal" with "liberal" you get 23% and if you combine "very conservative" with "conservative" you get 29%. "Moderate" came in at 38% and "don't know" came in at 10%. The numbers will vary by a few points from poll to poll, but the rough breakdown remains the same.

Here are a few more tidbits on how people identify their own affiliation and what that meant for the election:


(This is from The National Review)

So, you cannot attribute the Republicans' success to a majority of the population identifying itself as conservative. At best, it accounts for about 60% of the Republican vote. Where does the other 40% come from?

Assuming that very few self-described liberals vote Republican (though some do every time), there are two possibilities:

1)The Republicans are convincing many moderates to vote for them, or
2) A good portion of the moderates are actually conservatives but do not want to identify themselves that way to pollsters.

It is probably a little bit of both, but I think the first theory accounts for more of the votes than the second one.

Again, though, why? Part of it may be that there are some very visible Republican moderates out there (Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger and John McCain, to name a few), which gives moderates some cover when they vote for a conservative Republican candidate. But that can't be all of it. The Democrats haven't run a real liberal candidate in decades, opting instead for moderate after moderate (Kerry was more liberal than many, but by no means a raving leftie), while the Republicans have consistently pushed aside moderate presidential candidates in favor of avowed conservatives. Shouldn't that make moderates gravitate towards the Democrats? Well, it hasn't.

I don’t pretend to have an answer to this question, but clearly Democratic victory depends on either making more people believe in “liberal” values, or in getting more of the moderate vote in elections.

The religious vote

In the most recent election, churchgoers overwhelmingly voted Republican, at least among Christian voters, with a nearly 20 point spread for protestants (Kerry does much better with Jews and “Other”, taking roughly 75% in each case, and with those who say they have no religion, taking 68%). Christians accounted for 81% of the voters this year, so this is a huge advantage.

There also seems to be direct correlation between actual church attendance and Republican voters. Those who attend church weekly went 61% to Bush, while Kerry took 53% of those who go to church occasionally, and 63% of those who never go to church.

Why? Are Christians more conservative? Not according to a statistic I heard on the radio today. There, it was claimed that there are just as many self-described liberals in the church audience as there are conservatives.

Of course, the Southern, born-again evangelicals and devout Catholics tend to be very socially conservative, but that classification certainly does not apply to all Christian denominations.

Bush talked a good deal about faith during the campaign. Did that trigger a groundswell of support among Christians? Possibly. Kerry talked about faith, too, but I got the sense he was just going through the motions. Or maybe I just wanted that to be the case.

So what is going on? Again, it looks like the Republican success with moderates must be doing the trick. I don’t know why, but the Democrats sure need to find out.

Are Republicans ignorant?

No, no and emphatically no. Sure, some are, but I would wager there are just as many undereducated Democrats as Republicans, and the statistics bear this out. Bush won across every education level from high school graduate through college graduate. Kerry only won among those with graduate degrees. The two tied among those who had no high school at all.

Yes, I suppose you could say that the really smart people prefer Kerry, but that does not mean those who vote Bush are stupid. Even so, the margins across each education level are 8 points or less.

So you can’t say that people vote Republican because they are ignorant.

Are Republicans all rich?

The education statistics should answer that question, but here is the real data: Bush won among those who earn more than $50,000 a year (56%), and Kerry won among those who make less than $50,000 a year (55%). While these translate to roughly 10 point margins in each case, it certainly does not explain the election by itself.

Is it about security and terrorism?

You might argue that security and terrorism pushed Bush into the winner’s column this year (though, interestingly, it was not the number one issue identified by voters, it was identified as the key issue by only 19% of those polled – more on that later), and was a big help to those Republicans who were elected in 2002. That is probably true (and you can have your own opinion over whether people who are worried about terrorism are making the right choice in voting for Bush – I happen to think Kerry would do an equal or better job of it). That said, it’s a fairly new issue, and can’t explain what went on in the 1990s, or why Bush got elected in 2000.

“Moral Values”

Let’s look at what people identified as the “most important issue.” While there was no clear top choice, “moral values” came in highest with 22%, followed by economy/jobs (20%), terrorism (19%), and Iraq (15%).

Bush won big among those identifying moral values and terrorism (81% and 86%, respectively), while Kerry won big among those identifying the economy/jobs and Iraq (80% and 73%, respectively).

But what does “moral values” mean? Some say it is a proxy for opposition to gay marriage and civil unions (though 60% of the country favors those options – see below). While that certainly helped get people to the polls (through clever placement of gay marriage initiatives on the ballot in key states), I don't think the gay marriage issue is what swung this election, so I don't think that's the only thing people think of when they talk about "moral values". I think it is really more of a vague catch-all for a number of issues, ranging from abortion to gay marriage to stem cells to affirmative action to prayer in schools.

Again, what does it all mean? Does the population think Kerry has different moral values than the rest of the population? Obviously those who think this is an important issue think so, based on the results.

Are there just more Republicans?

Nope. Democrats and Republicans can each claim 37% of the voters this election. 26% of voters identified themselves as Independent.

Summing up

Well, I seriously doubt anyone has gotten this far, so I will sum up:

**You can’t dismiss Republican voters as ignorant sheep.

**You can say that Republicans do very well among regular churchgoers.

**I don’t know what it is about Bush and the Republican party that people seem to like, but there is something going on that Democrats need to understand. Whether it is coming up with a more effective counter to Republican campaign strategies or trying harder to make the Democratic case to the people, the Democrats need to do something.


Other notes of interest

Just a few additional points about the election:

**The Republican gains in the House have a lot to do with the unprecedented mid-decade redistricting that took place in Texas last year. That redistricting was engineered by Republicans looking to create 4 new Republican safe seats out of what used to be Democratic seats. And it worked.

**Bush has been proudly claiming that more people voted for him this year than voted for any other President in US history. That is true. However, more people voted for Kerry this year than for any President in US history (other than Bush this year, of course). Bush’s statistic has more to do with population growth and voter turn-out than any kind of mandate.

**Speaking of mandates, I’ve also heard Bush claiming a “broad nationwide victory,” presumably looking to claim a mandate for the next few years. True to form, this is gross exaggeration. Bush lost all of the northeast, the upper mid-west and the entire west coast. He won the popular vote this time, but with a measly 51%. None of this equals a mandate. By this standard, there are national mandates to:

**Keep abortion legal or “mostly legal” (56%)
**Allow same sex couple to legally marry or form civil unions (60%)

(Actually, those both look like mandates even without Bush’s aggressive definition.)

__________________
A little silliness now and then is cherished by the wisest men. -- Willy Wonka