Florida. What happened?

Great Debates
1

From an average UK perspective, it’s difficult to understand a majority vote for Bush. In particular, I personally don’t know why Florida went the way it did. In my ignorance, I had assumed that the closeness of the last election there plus the turnout=democrat vote factor would carry it. I think that I’m right in saying that, all else being equal, Florida could have swung the election.

So what happened?

Things I can think of:

a) A large turnout of older voters (>30).
b) A larger than expected Republican vote by younger voters.
c) A moral vote (probably anti same sex marriage).
d) A fear vote (it looks like people have treated the terrorism (as separate to Iraq) issue as a CinC-in-a-time-of-war thing.

Was there a single issue (not necessarily above) that could have swayed Florida the other way?

2

This isn’t really a General Question. But since I don’t hang out in Great Debates much, I’ll jump in here.

I am in Florida, and I voted for Bush. Why? Because even though I might not agree with everything he stands for, at least he stands for shit. He makes a decision and stands behind it without trying to appeal to what he thinks people want to hear. Let’s face it, Kerry’s entire damn campaign was nothing but “I’m not Bush, vote for me”.
If Bush is so awful a president, why is it that the Democrats had such an impossible time trying to find anyone better??? Obviously this means there is something seriously screwed up with the Democratic Party right now. I mean, c’mon. How hard could it have possibly been to find a better candidate than Bush. I would have easily voted for a better candidate. But Kerry is not a better. He’s not a “lesser of two evils”. He’s just a shitty or more so. And if he’s not “better” I see no reason to replace someone who’s already been doing things for four years. Sorry, but Kerry was not going to be a magical fix for the world. He was going to bring peace to the middle east or any of the other ridiculous ideas people have.
Kerry was so awful. I hated even listening to him speak. He’s a good public speaker, but the things he says do not appeal to me. To me, Kerry is an idiot because the decisions he makes, not because the way he talks. Bush screws up his speeches all the time, but I like most of his decisions.

3

or e) A lot of people just like Bush, they haven’t thought too much about the specific issues, they just like the guy.

4

Apparently, a lot of people thought Kerry would be an even bigger disaster.

5

Looking at the exit polls (yeah, I know) it seems that it could be a combination of all of those, plus some others. Youth turnout was lower than expected. The Hispanic population (15% of the population) voted more for Bush (56%) than some might have expected. Also, Catholics (28% of the population) voted almost as much in favor of Bush (57%) as Protestants (51% of the population) voted for Bush (59%). This might be because of Kerry’s stance on abortion and same-sex marriage. Finally, more people gave terrorism as the most important issue (24%) in Florida than nationwide (19%).

6

Diebold voting machines?

7

Florida Voters are a collective fucking mess though. I will give you that. I was pretty disappointed yesterday! But not because of the Presidential race, because of local stuff.

Who the hell votes AGAINST mass-transit??? With traffic on I-4 increasing like crazy, gas prices through the roof, and state population skyrocketting… who in their right mind would vote against any form of mass transit??? Apparantly voters in Florida don’t think there is any need to step into the 21st Century. Hell… we’re talking about a train here, so really we’d just be playing catch-up!!
But honestly, can people NOT see passed the next 2 or three years. Can they not see how desperately Florida will be needing a Bullet Train 10 or 15 years from now? I don’t get it.

How could people vote against adding slot machine tax revenue for schools. Are they really that freaking scared of gambling? Gambling already takes place at these places. Damn moral fundie conservatice morons! Will a few slot machines really unravel the fabric of our society??? Millions for schools throughtout the state!! Oh well, at least we are safer from moral corruption :rolleyes:

Increase minimum wage??? I can kinda see both sides of this issue. But it looks like only 20% of Florida voted against it like I did. Whatever. Sigh.

But at least we didn’t vote for Kerry though.

8

This probably deserves its own thread, but…

I have been watching both American and Canadian elections my whole life. While I haven’t done or seen a truly scientific study on it, I am convinced that the absolute #1 predictor of the result of any election is that the candidate with a clear platform will beat the candidate with the unclear platform.

It makes no difference what the platform IS. You can propose basically anything short of strangling kittens as national policy; as long as your stance is clear and the opponent’s is less clear, you will probably win. A candidate who can be clearly discerned as standing for A, B and C will almost invariably defeat a candidate whose platform is murky. Bearing in mind that I’m talking about large scale elections here, not individual ridings (in Canada) or House seats (in the USA) but even that can be predicted at a macro level; look how well the Republicans did in the House in 1994 when they had a really clear platform.

An interesting local example to me is the elections we’ve had in the province of Ontario, which is a large jurisdiction (12,000,000 people) and very diverse, so it serves as a good example. Way back when in 1995, the Progressive Conservatives ran ona neo-conservative-lite program called the “Common Sense Revolution,” sort a Republicans Without The Christianity thing. This platform was scoffed at; opponents characterized it as the destruction of all things holy. Everyone laughed early in the campaign and said they would be trounced. Noticing that neither of the other parties had a platform - the Liberals were running on “Vote For Us, Because We’re The Liberals” and the NDP had “Re-elect Us, We Promise We Won’t Be As Much Of A Disaster As We’ve Been” I predicted a Conservative triumph, to the amusement of anyone who would listen.

Guess who won? The party with a clear, unambiguous platform. By a mile.

In 1999, the Progressive Conservatives ran for re-election promising Common Sense Revolution 2. The opposition promised, well, not to be Conservative. The re-election was a smashing success.

Then last year the PCs decided to compromise on their platform. They were getting some negative press, so they backed away from the platform. Their election platform was a mishmash of old and new ideas. Result: They were slaughtered by a Liberal party that had a few clear planks as their platform. (All of which turned out to be lies, but hey, that’s politics.)

I cannot think of ANY major election that bucks this rule. Every federal election in the last 20 years featuring a clear platform against an unclear one has resulted in the clear platform winning, no matter who the face was, no matter what the platform said. The next time I see an exception to this rule will be the first time.

While I too think that Bush is a lousy President and a war criminal, I know what his platform was. Kerry, not so sure. He didn’t really have a plan for Iraq that was discernably different from what Bush proposed, that I could tell; it was like “Well, I’m going to do better and get more allies involved.” As the Onion article put it, he really just had a one-point plan; Get Rid of George Bush. The candidate with the clear, unambiguous platform beat the candidate whose platform was fuzzy. No surprise at all.

9

In an attempt to keep this GQ, I’m sure that we can refrain from actually discussing things :slight_smile: .

Thanks to Bear for a Florida reaction. In the GQ vein, (non-partisan, remember :slight_smile: ), what did you expect to happen compared to the 2000 neck-and-neck result. Why did you think that your fellow Floridians would vote towards your expectations (presumably, not everyone has the same reason(s) as you, especially as you sound like you might have voted Bush last time).

1920s. But why? They didn’t like him more than 50% last time. What has made the difference?

Sattua. Expand please (in a GQ manner).

Roches. Thanks.

10

We can sit here all day long and think of reasons as to explain what happened, but bottom line is the moajority of people wanted Bush to be their president. And it wasn’t so close this time around, which I was grateful for as to at least avoid the manual recounts and suspense.

11

To put it into perspective, there are apparently some voters in Florida who voted for Gore in 2000, but who switched to Bush in 2004. Bear_Nenno, were you one such? Because if you weren’t, then your vote wouldn’t have made the difference between 2000 and 2004.

12

a GA (general answer)… while I don’t know the specifics of how they planned to impliment it if it passed… but in MI a few years back, they did the exact same thing w/ the Lotto = School Tax Dollars. … Everyone voted for it, expecting a big increase in school funding… What happened? For every dollar that Lotto provided for schools, they took a dollar back from what was being spent out of the General Fund. … Net Result = Zero increase for school funding.

This year, they (Jennifer Granholm and Casino Intrests) tried to shoot down a proposal to require a general vote to install any new casinos and some Lottery games. They used the scare tactic of Less casinos/lotto = Less school dollars. … which was a blatent lie.

So, to answer your Q… w/ MHO… is that they were prolly afraid that your lawmakers were trying to pull the same trick that MI lawmakers pulled on us.

13

Exactly what I was thinking as I drove in to work this morning, (listening to the news people drive the final nails into America’s coffin) – why can’t the Democratic Party pick candidates who know how to talk? I swear, I’d start a “Draft James Carville” campaign right now, only I don’t think I could stomach Mary Matalin as First Lady.

Sorry.

Anyway, I agree that Kerry’s lack of a platform doomed his campaign – if you’re going to run as nothing more than opposition, you need to be a LOT meaner; I’m puzzled by the way he muzzled John Edwards, too. I don’t really think Edwards is nearly as bright as his law career would indicate, but the man had a message, and he knew how to give a speech. Gore mostly tried to run on Bill Clinton’s coat-tails without actually mentioning the man himself. Kerry didn’t even have coat-tails.

As for Florida in particular, I think Jeb Bush’s rising popularity also contributed. He apparently did well with the hurricane season, has avoided some of the pitfalls that hit his earlier years, and has generally made Floridans happier than in 2000. Happy people vote for incumbents.

14

Who’s Happy??? :frowning: Oh yeah, Rich People :smack:

15

I share the OP’s difficulty in understanding Bush’s victory. Here’s what I think happened:

  1. Republican spin machine. Even democrats acknowledge that their opponent’s is far more effective. I mean, come on, is there any other party could have gotten away with invading Iraq?

The single biggest reason Bush won. America is full of them, and they vote for the anti-abortion Republic candidate no matter what the other issues are.
3. Republicans have a clear platform while democrats tend to make up a mixture of everybody else. To somebody who doesn’t read the paper everyday, Bush was a clear choice just for the reason that they knew what he was going to do.

16

[hijack]Jester21
This is what happened with the Florida Lottery many years ago. It was supposed to be for education. But they used it to REPLACE current funding and not supplement it. Because of this, the amendment was very clearly worded and provided that the extra (suspected 500 Million) would have to be used to SUPPLEMENT current educational funding. It would not replace it. And it could be used for other stuff as well. Anti-Gambling freaks used the previous Lottery for Education scam to scare people into voting against the slot machines. Making them think the same thing would happen. And adding stuff about how machines would pop up everywhere (even though they were being strictly limited to like four southern counties) and crime would go nuts and people would start eating babies and other crap. Ridiculous. There are tons of places to gamble in Florida. Go to any port, get on a boat and ride out a couple miles. Plus there are Indian Casinos, Jai a Lai, dog tracks, horse tracks… You can gamble your ass off from anywhere in the state.[/hijack]

Chronos, no I voted for Bush the first time as well.

Ironic how my biggest disagreement with Bush is every other supporters’ biggest reason to vote for him. But you are correct. While I am proChoice, proStemCell, proGay Marriage, and proLegalizing Drugs, most of his supporters are not.

17

jester21:

Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot. (Talmud, Avos)

18

I just read something which suggest that the hurricane season might have benefitted Bush. Apparently, 87% of Floridians approve of the way the federal government responded after that nasty hurricane gang-rape last summer. There’s some speculation that Bush might have benefitted from a feeling of gratutude towards the federal government.

19

Emphasis mine.

That’s really the key to it. Once people perceive that the politicians wiggled the money out through some loophole and spent it on something unwanted (translation, something I didn’t want) that’s the end of public support.

When I voted for casinos here in Missouri, I thought I knew what I was voting for. Like jester21 I felt like I was misled, and I haven’t voted for any gambling proposal since.

20

Arghhhhh!! Typo, sorry.

It should be, “COULDN"T be used for anything else”. They really went out of their way writing it so that it could NOT be used for other things. Though they maybe should have set off a portion to go toward Law Enforcement to combat the, arguable, increase in crime. But they didnt. They wrote two stipulations:
The money must suppliment educational funding. Not replace.
The money could not be redirected anywhere else.

It was win-win for anyone who wasn’t scared of gambling, anyone who wanted increased money for schools, and anyone who wanted to add slot machines to their parimutual gaming business. I can’t see why so many people were opposed. Other than the distrust from the previous Lottery fiasco.