How Bush Won the Popular Vote

Great Debates
1

Left Hand of Dorkness’ post ( #39 ) in the Who should the Democrats choose for national party chair? thread reminded me of an idea I had about why President Bush recorded over three million more votes nationwide. No, this isn’t another voter fraud thread. I suspect it has to do with recent electoral history and mostly because there were a whole lot more pro-Bush people than there were pro-Kerry people.

That sounds simplistic but I am talking about people who genuinely support a candidate and not just think he is the lesser of 2 evils. About as many Americans preferred Kerry to Bush as the other way around but it seems to me that there were far more people who liked Bush than who liked Kerry. IOW- people voted for Kerry because he was the only chance to prevent a 2nd Bush Administration.

So here is my off-the-cuff theory about the popular vote: people in battleground states could vote against Bush by going for Kerry but people in safe states could not. Their vote wasn’t going to affect the outcome so they could only register symbolic opposition. For Bush supporters, OTOH, the symbolism was more important because of his performance in 2000. By showing up at the polls even in safe states they might give the President, assuming he won, the legitimacy he failed to gain by being a minority winner in the last election.

I admit from the start this is an unformed idea. I haven’t done any homework on it and am just running it past y’all. Am I way offbase? Has anyone suggested this possibility before?

2

This theory could be checked by looking up the total voter turnout in all states. If total voter turnout is a lot higher in “swing states” than in other states, then that would lend credence to what you say.

3

I think a lot of follks looked at Kerry and saw a rich guy who talked funny and had a butler. They looked at Bush and saw a rich guy who had a ranch.
And then, there was the “don’t change horses in mid stream” thing.

4

Off the bat, looking at it from an objective (as I can get) historical perspective I’d hypothesize that Kerry was simply a very weak candidate, and Bush had much a much more passionate, involved, and emotional core group of voters. That, along with at atmoshphere of fear and lack of Kerry policy on Iraq, led to a larger Republican turnout than Democratic.

In short, Kerry sucked as a candidate and more Dems sat on their asses watching Jon Stewart. Republicans were very into the policy put forth by the Bush admin, and voted on the issues (lower taxes, war on terr- er, sorry, War on Terror, abortion and homosexual marriage, etc). Bush made a point of bringing these things up, Kerry made a point of avoiding them almost entirely. I view it more as a Democrat failure than a Republican victory.

5

I’m not so much interested here in why people preferred or supported either candidate but rather how those positions affected the popular vote total.

I don’t think it would. Higher turnout in the battleground states is the expected outcome. That’s where the electoral battle takes place, after all. Still, those numbers would be useful if anyone knows where they can be found? The only statistics I’ve seen to substantiate the variation in turnout aren’t ballot totals but merely surveys conducted by Harvard’s Vanishing Voter Project in 2000.

6

My theory: the people will buy a bad plan that they understand before they buy a good plan that they don’t understand. If Kerry said “My plan is to repeal the tax cut for the richest 1% of Americans” and Bush said “He’s gonna raise taxes”, even those who far fall short of the richest 1% become afraid of a tax increase. If you can’t reduce the campaign to a catch phrase, you won’t win.

Other contributing factor: backlash against gay marriage. Doesn’t matter if Kerry and Cheney had precisely the same opinion and that Kerry and Bush differed only very slightly. By taking the strong “anti” stand a lot of people assume that Kerry must take the opposite stand.

7

I don’t know how you’d go about proving this, but it seems doubtful, unless there was an organized effort to get out “extra” Bush votes in safe states like South Carolina, etc. Seems like a waste of money when you think you might lose the whole election. And I can’t see where 3M people would collectively come up with this idea independently. But maybe you should look at voter turnout in '00 vs '04 in the various safe states and see if there is a pattern. But, in the end we really don’t know why ANYONE voted for whom they did unless you ask them (and they answer honestly).

Also, the election is about more than just the president. People don’t simply stay home and avoid the election altogether simply because they live in a “safe” state. Often there are ballot initiatives and bond issues that are MUCH more meaningful to people in their day-to-day lives than who wins the presidency.

8

A bit after the election, i compared the numbers from 2000 with 2004. Looking at the percentage of votes that Bush got in each state, he did better in almost all the states in 2004 than 2000. There didn’t seem to be much of a pattern in the amount that his percentage increased.

In only two states did he do noticeably worse, Vermont and New Hampshire. I believe it was due to the Dean influence, but i can’t be sure.

9

Looking at the views on the issues of everyone in the country, it puzzles me, too, that Bush could win the popular vote. After all, most voters agree with Kerry, or even more liberal-leaning positions, on most issues.

However, this is patently not true on homosexual rights, and other social issues such as abortion.

I don’t think that voters were being tricked (not that anyone said they were), I just think that their social conservatism trumped their misgivings about Iraq and the deficit.

10

I was thinking about those faith based organizations Bush has been financing. Supposedly the Repubs used them to get out votes. I don’t know much about them but I assume that they are if not mostly nationwide organizations at least have national coordination for the local organizations. So if you are connecting to people via these conduits you are reaching potential voters in all states. Giving people in safe states an incentive to vote is actually shrewd politics instead of a waste of money. By giving them the feeling they are useful they feel connected and thus are more likely to help in other ways, ie donating money now and in the future or proselytizing among people they know in battleground states.

This might show some promise. I don’t suppose anyone knows of a comparison of the numbers?

True, there is a lot of “noise” to sort through. But the president is a big draw. Not only does turnout tend to be higher in the swing compared to safe states but also during presidential elections compared to midterm elections.

11

If I may indulge in flip overgeneralization, I have come to the conclusion that the electorate can be divided into two groups:

  1. People who don’t care what the government does as long as it doesn’t raise taxes, favor minorities and immigrants, and hold back Christianity, and

  2. People who don’t care what the government does as long as it doesn’t go on pointless, bloody military adventures, favor big corporations, and promote “traditional values” over “personal freedom”.

There were more of Group 1 than Group 2.

12

If you take a look at Bush’s Brain, you begin to see Karl Rove’s role in getting GW re-elected. Bush himself confessed that Karl Rove was the The Architect and the strategist behind GW’s 2004 win. Of course, Rove attributes the popular vote to the President’s appeal – never mind the stupid smirk on his face when he talks about the Iraq fiasco and the budget deficits. Rove also attributes the Republican gains in the House and Senate to the intelligence of the voters – never mind the answer to the Daily Mirror’s front page question: How can 59 million people be “so dumb”.

IMHO, Karl Rove’s design to put the anti-gay-marriage initiative on the same ballot as the Presidential election helped Bush win, especially in a crucial state such as Ohio. This could also answer why 3 million more Bible lovers/voters were induced to go to the polls, primarily to say “NO to gay marriage” while, by the way, ticking Bush’s name for his stand on the same issue. Indeed, Bravo to Bush’s Brain.

13

Marketing. In a word. The American people have been sold an image, indeed, several images.

The Leader: this is a direct result of 9/11. There is a natural human tendency to rally round in times of crisis, all a man need do is walk about mouthing stern platitudes and be photographed hugging a hero or two, and he is The Leader. The fact that he is a towering mediocrity is of no consequence, people will see what they want to see. The Pubbies exploited this relentlessly and greedily. As time has gone on, it has become more clear that the Emperor has no flight suit, he is a fraud and a humbug, Elmer Fudd pretending he is Churchill. But it takes a very long time for this to wear away. The amazing thing is not that it did wear away, but that it did so as quickly as it did. The Leader’s approval has plunged from the low nineties down to the lowest fifties.

The Home Boy: this is the real triumph of marketing, selling us an image of a straightforward Man of the People out of a pampered, overprivileged elitist snot. How many times can he go down to the ranch in Crawford, a ranch that has been in his family for months, to clear brush. Is there that much brush in the entire state of Texas? But there he is, clearing that brush, got his manly, virile work gloves on, a horny handed son of toil who works for a hobby. Bushwah.

The Christian: Bush regularly salts his dialogue with vaguely Biblical references while firmly asserting his support for the very worst infestations of Protestant American dogma. They railed hysterically about Kerry’s plan to force Eagle Scouts into gay marriages, and loudly swore to defend the "sanctity’ of marriage in the most divorce-prone nation in the world. But they knew, as you know and I know, it was all about bigotry. The desperate moral crisis was the election, that desperate crisis being past, the anti-gay bigots are pushed aside, thanks for your votes, see you in a couple of years.

Marketing, all marketing. Happily, he is his own worst enemy, outside of myself. His arrogance and delusion will be his undoing, he will overreach himself, he is not capable of doubt or reflection, far less capable of compromise. We have a bitter lesson coming to us, there is no avoiding it, we can only hope to have learned something from it, when the carrion birds come home to roost. There is only this scrap of comfort: they damn sure can’t blame it on us.

14

This may be flip, but there is probably more truth to it than many other theories batted around this boards… such as “Karl Rove is Satan”…

15

Well, of course, he isn’t Satan! My cousin works for UPS, he isn’t UPS!

16

I am thinking the same way.

The problem is, much of this “faith-based” coordination has (until now) fallen under the radar of the media and pollsters. This, I think, could account for some of the “surprises” we saw in the last election. So how do we measure it in retrospect?

In lieu of hard cites and numbers, I’d say it’s a supposition worthy of consideration (I’m currently looking for some hard cites and numbers, and will post anything promising here, for your perusal).

17

Exactly. When it comes to broadcast TV and radio, if you can’t keep it down to one or two sentences composed entirely of words of one or two syllables, don’t even bother to say it. The idjits won’t understand it and they won’t buy it.

18

but they willl.

19

No, the Left never calls the American voter stupid. Never happens.

20

We leave that job to Ann Coulter. :wink: