John Podhoretz has this analysis in today's N.Y. Post:
...On Tuesday, 9 million more votes were cast than in 2000. On Tuesday, Bush received 8.3 million votes more than he did in 2000. If those 8.3 million Bush voters who weren't there for Dubya in 2000 all came from the big pool of new voters, then Democrats should start getting ready to pack it up and move to France. Why? Because a Republican president has increased his ballot total by 15 percent simply by creating new Republican voters who didn't exist before. This is potentially catastrophic for the Democratic Party. It will go into the next two national elections (in 2006 and 2008) with a Republican electorate 15 percent larger than it was four years ago. But look. It's highly unlikely that every new Bush voter came from the overall new voter pool. It's safer to assume that new voters split the way the overall electorate split, 51-48 in favor of the president.Posted by dan at November 4, 2004 11:28 AMUnder this scenario, John Kerry deserves congratulations for receiving about 4.3 million votes that didn't exist when Al Gore ran for president four years ago. But before Democrats start sending Kerry congratulatory telegrams, they should consider this: Bush only got 4.7 million from the new-voter pool, then his historic total means he got another 3.6 million votes from people who voted Democratic in 2000.
So if you figure the new voters broke 51-48 in favor of the president, you also have to figure that George W. bush took a whopping 7 percent of Gore's 2000 vote total away from the Democrats. Democrats can and should console themselves with the thought that they can get those voters back. If someone has pulled the Democratic lever before, there's reason to think they can go Democratic again under the right circumstances and with the right candidate. But to do that, Democrats will have to accept reality. And the reality is this: Democrats voted for Bush in large numbers because they like him. They admire him. They want him to be president. They don't think he's an idiot, a fascist, a warmonger, a religious fanatic, a kook, a liar, a cheat, a monster, a bad guy. They think he's done a good job. The Democratic Party has spent four years demonizing George W. Bush, and in part because of their stupid, useless, senseless negativism, Terry McAuliffe & Co. lost 4 million voters.
I tried to link to the full text of the article, but it didn't seem to work - maybe too busy or down.
Anyway, I think one factor that I haven't yet heard discussed on this subject is what happened to the Nader voters. I briefly searched for the numbers, but couldn't find exact figures. But, in 2000, I think he pulled in nearly 3-4 million votes. In 2004, he managed only 300K. I think it's very fair to say from the 2000 election, as the Republicans frequently claimed, that the Nadar voters were nowhere near exclusively Democrats. In fact, the only people I know that voted for Nader in 2000 are very strictly Republican.
I do think that the Republicans did a great job getting voters to turnout, especially when all the talk was about the grass roots efforts of the Democrats. Unfortunately, I think that the main issue in this election turned out to be gay rights. It seems to me that a lot of people were voting for their right to be prejudice, but that's a discussion for another day (probably soon to be in the Supreme Court).
Posted by: jj at November 4, 2004 01:16 PMWow, Republican Nader voters? Don't know any of those personally.
While it seems that the gay marriage issues in 11 states seem to have helped with turnout of voters who also voted for Bush, I don't think that gay marriage can accurately be called "the main issue" in the election. Not by a long shot. Because frankly, the gay marriage issues had a lot less to do with the "rights" of gay people than they did with the definitions of marriage in our society, and more importantly, with our insistence that legislation is rightly (constitutionally) written by legislators and voted on by citizens or accountable legislative bodies, not imposed by judicial fiat from the bench.
As to voting for the "right to be prejudiced", I'll just say that the Democrats have already started to spin the Bush turnout as representative of an ugly homophobia. There is certainly homophobia out there, and certainly not exclusively among Bush voters. Some of the most virulent expressions of homophobia that I witness day to day come from my politically liberal acquaintances and friends. It is insulting to millions of decent and good people to equate their votes against changing the centuries old definition of the institution of marriage, with hate and bigotry. I oppose "gay marriage" as such, because it is a contradiction in terms. I do favor some legal way to formalize (and encourage) committed gay relationships, i.e. civil unions, etc. I would oppose any attempt to limit the civil rights of gays in any way, (and Bush has not proposed any such limitation).
Posted by: dan at November 4, 2004 07:18 PMI just feel that it is obvious that marriage is a religious entity, and with the little concept about the separation of church and state, I don't see how it can even remotely stand up in any court let alone make it onto any ballot. Sure, it's constitutional for the people to vote on laws, but if the proposed law violates an ammendment . . . it makes no difference. If you put something like slavery on the ballot . . . it could very well pass in some states . . . but does that make it constitutional?
And, what I meant about this being the main issue . . . let me rephrase . . . I think it was the deciding issue. Without it, I think the election could've turned out very differently.
Posted by: jj at November 5, 2004 01:56 AM