http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_11/005117.php Kevin Drum links to the exit polls from 2000 and 2004 (links in the article), and compares them. BTW, this is why blogs are gonna outstrip the MSM soon. The MSM repeats what partisan evangelicals and GOPs tell them, and that becomes the conventional wisdom. The MSM doesn't believe in things like research and reporting. Anyway, evangelicals were, within the MoE, no bigger factor than in 2000, and maybe less. Looking at the 2004 exit poll data, here, in my opinion, is one of the two places Kerry lost the election. Yes (55%) 81% n/a 18% 0% No (42%) 11% n/a 88% 1% The question was, is Iraq part of the WOT. Bush won the Yes vote 81-18 (+63), Kerry won the No vote 88-11 (+77). So, swinging that 55-42 yes to a 52-45 no would have meant 7 points for Kerry. (Am I right on the math? Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) If I'm right on the math, even a 5 point swing in that question swings the popular vote to Kerry, and leads to a nice electoral college win. So, the easiest way for the Dems to have won would have been to nominate a candidate who could have most strongly argued that the WOT and Iraq are two different things. Which is another way of saying, nominate Howard Dean or Wesley Clark. Even failing that, Kerry blew it when he didn't follow the Murtha Gambit, and he also didn't give a better answer to the "if you knew then what you know now, how would you have voted" question. I remember at the time, I thought that was a mistake, but I had no idea how big. Bad policy AND bad politics. The gain for Bush wrt foreign policy was very slightly in thinking he was the better man for the job, mostly in the salience of foreign policy. Which is another way of saying 9/11 saved Bush's presidency. The weakness of blogs is here, too. Kevin doesn't have an editor. He seems to be saying elsewhere that one reason Bush won is because he got alot of people to vote for him despite saying their personal family situation was worse than before. But, Kerry beat him 79-20 there, which on the face of it seems pretty normal. (Some people's financial situation is gonna get worse because of a health crisis, or something that clearly is unrelated to politics, so they're gonna vote how they vote. Some people are single issue voters on guns or abortion or what have you.) In 2000, by comparison, Bush won the "worse" voters only 63-36, so I don't see a 79-20 edge for Kerry as anything unusual. Maybe I don't understand what Kevin is trying to say, but either way, an editor would help. Either by making his writing more clear, or by getting his conclusions more tightly tied to his data. Oh yeah, two ways Kerry lost. The other is that he didn't draw stronger contrasts to Bush on issues that matter to the elderly. The prescription drug plan is a mess, but Bush went up by 7 points among the 24% of voters 60 and older, compared to 2000. Change that +7 to -3, and there's the election right there. IMO, it's a failure of John Kerry to not do better among the elderly than Al Gore did, given the drug plan and Bush's plans for SS. This is probably a way of saying it was a mistake not to nominate Howard Dean or Bob Graham, or even John Edwards.* The GOPs have been very stealthy about their plans for social security, but as soon as Bush wins, he threw away the issues that he ran on, and pushed his reverse Robin Hood policies. So if the current and imminent retirees get f***** by Bush's policies, they'll have nobody to blame but themselves. *I recognize that in making these counterfactual arguments, I'm depositing Edwards' and Dean's strengths into a campaign that was between Bush and Kerry. That if it had been Dean, the whole dynamic of the race would have been different, and we would have some different numbers. Still, wrt Iraq, I think the difference would have been negligible, because it was events in Iraq and not campaign strategies that made Iraq such an important issue.
"22% of voters said "moral values" was their most important issue. Among these voters, 80% voted for Bush, while in 2000 voters who said "moral leadership" was a higher priority than managing government gave him 70% of their votes. Although this suggests that Bush made some inroads with this group, the 2000/2004 questions aren't really comparable enough to draw a conclusion. " If 22% of voters (we don't know how many in 2000 would have ranked this #1) care most about moral values/moral leadership (is there really a difference?) and Bush goes from .7 to .8 of this group, that explains 73% of his increase. That isn't "some inroads" but pretty much explains the election. The problem I have with the Iraq issue is that it's not entirely a factual question. IS IRAQ WAR PART OF WAR ON TERRORISM? That's not the same as asking whether Iraq was part of the 9-11 plot. We've got a chicken and egg problem here. Are people's views of the war affecting their vote or is their political ideology affecting their perception of the war? I think most of us can agree that the war isn't going very well. That has to be an easier sell than Iraq not being a part of the war on terror. Yet 44-45% say the war is going well (and 90% support Bush). That tells me that a 10 point swing on "IS IRAQ WAR PART OF WAR ON TERRORISM?" is the absolute limit. You're going to need to convince half the people that are remotely open to persuasion to change their mind.
This is frigging confusing. I think we lost to a bunch of looney christians who think the rapture is near, but are having too good a time loading up the Ford 150 at Walmart.
It is not just the evangelicals. Yesterday I was talking to a friend who I play soccer with, and who is a hispanic Catholic. He had often in our past discussions strongly criticized President Bush, and in particular the 'tax cuts for the rich' as he saw it. So, I was surprised to learn that he voted for the president. But he says it wasn't a vote for the president, because (in his words, not mine) he knows the president doesn't give a shit about people like him. But he said that in the final balance he had to vote against those who mocked his core beliefs. He then went on a rant about how there should be a third party which cares about people and which doesn't mock their beliefs and their values. This is just one guy, but I suspect there are many people like this guy.
I considered mentioning Hispanic voters, but from my understanding, there aren't that many of them in red states except Texas and Florida. In Texas, the 9% drop in Dem support isn't why they lost the state. WRT Florida, they're mostly Cubans and vote on a different set of issues. Besides, in what way does John Kerry "mock" his core beliefs?
The people who voted on "moral values" are the Republican base. Reaching out to them is beyond pointless. Taking this at face value tells me those same Republicans would have voted for Mullah Omar over Kerry, because Kerry wasn't tough enough on gay marriage. That's madness. If it wasn't gay marriage, it would have been abortion, or stem cells, or evolution, or the pledge of allegiance, or some other red meat issue. The people voted not to hear bad news about Iraq. Instead, they will hear worse news about Iraq.
Hasn't it been pretty much proven that the exit polls were totally wrong anyway? To keep using them seems pointless. But, I didn't read the article, I just looked at the pictures.
FWIW, Bush may have lost Nevada were it not from his increased support among Hispanics. In any event, while the Hispanic drift to the right may not have made a major difference in the electoral college this time around, it will by 2012 or 2016 when a majority of the Hispanic vote will be one of the primary reasons why California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Mexico are solid red states, and Illinois, Oregon, and Washington are swing states.
Not here. Blame Pete Wilson and the Prop 187 crowd. What was once a promising inroad for the GOP was nuked for short-term gain. The clash between immigrant-baiting nativists and Latinos won't necessarily play out elsewhere, but California is the cautionary tale for the GOP on this issue.
The most ig'nantest thing about this outlandish statement is that it lumps distinct areas of the country and their immigration (and lack thereof in some cases!!) into a monolithic "Hispanic" block. Break down the New York/New Jersey vote a bit; try to sever the Miami/Cuban vote from all others; try to nuance the difference btw a rural Latino, big city Latino (voting patterns are much more similar than the rural/city 'Merica vote) and the upwardly mobile, more assimilated Latino. And then there's country of origin in MesoAmerica. The Chicano factor. Git edumacated, boy!
So Carlos, I am curious. No trap here. How do you see the Hispanic vote moving? Everything I have read/heard shows that Bush's biggest inroads into any group came in the Hispanic vote. From the aggregate numbers there were certainly a lot more Hispanics that voted for Bush this time around than last time. I have a few ideas myself but I don't think the gay marriage issue flies for all the movement there. Just my opinion but I think there must be more than that.
From an EJ Dionne column today. "The exit polls found that perhaps 10 percent of Al Gore's 2000 voters switched to Bush. Of these, more than eight in 10 thought the war in Iraq was part of the war on terrorism." Interesting.
This group is not monolithic, it's comprised of all races, from different countries w/ unique political, social and economic histories. And not all are citizens, so it's difficult to gauge the "true" overall leanings of an incredibly diverse group. I can't really say, nor can anybody truly say.
How's Fred doing? I haven't seen him since he was in Pittsburgh, protesting a memorial service for... wait for it... Fred Rogers. That's right. God hates ******** and Mr. Rogers. In any case, I figure you probably had a better chance than I did to take him out. I didn't think an event memorializing Mr. Rogers was a good place to whack a guy. Even Fred Phelps.
I think that's a very tough call to make. Without a truly thorough understanding of the socio-political and economics of the hispanic communities around the country one can only make a guess, and I'm not sure how educated it is really going to be. This election people did vote with a certain moral standard guiding their way. I think these people saw in Kerry a man that did not fit the mold of the man who belonged in the White House. Who knows what happens over the next four or eight or twelve years. The economic climate is sure to change not only in the US, but globally as well. It's entirely possible that a third party may appear and take this country by storm. There are just too many variables to really call where this nation is headed, let alone how a demographic will vote. That being said I see the Republican party sitting right where it is, possibly moving a little left. I see the Democratic party moving just a hair right. In the end the two parties are going to be barely distinguishable, resulting in a third party being established, eventually leading to the merger of the two older parties into the Republicratic party (which will quickly be known as the Big Ass Party).