According to the AP, Kerry got 77% of the Jewish vote, which is only 4 points below the guy that picked a Jewish VP. Furthermore, the Orthodox vote Republican for the same reasons that evangelicals do and they're a growing population. If you find this "unexpected and disappointing" I can only hope the Republicans buy that spin. Unfortunately, I know they're pissed.
Independent doesn't mean "neutral". *EVERYONE* leans one way or another on issues, and thus even if you have chosen not to register with one party or another, you're always going to feel much more aligned with one or another. I think the fact that more Democrats voted for Bush then the other way around is very telling as well. The way it was portrayed in the media, is that everyone but right wing nut jobs would vote for Kerry, which retrospectivley was terribly wrong and misleading.
And now the lady in Iowa has exactly the government she deserves; whether or not that's good or bad for her, in Iowa, I don't know.
Indeed, even on the "issue" of 'Hey, what constitutes an issue, who says so, and who controls the baseline education system, the context, through which we come to understand these issues?'
Maybe that's just semantics. When Rove says, "These are less active Bush-oriented voters, people who have not had a pattern of voting,"...that's my point about them just being able to count votes better. They found a soft spot within the larger group of "independents"-a block that showed it could be receptive to Bush, and worked like hell to make sure they got to the polling place.
There were not as many independent voters as was portrayed, IMO. That led to a perception that Kerry had the best chance to win them, whether true or not. Bush won, not by focusing on independents per se, but by focusing on various groups, all of whom had a common thread with Bush. For example, he picked up a huge chunk of the Hispanic vote by appealing to their religious base. But he also increased his share of the black vote by 2%, Jewish by 6%, women by 5% IIRC. None of these were big numbers by themselves but in the end it made the difference. Frankly, I think the idea of the Independents was a smoke screen by the media to create interest because most others made up their minds months ago and nothing they heard in the meantime changed anything.