It’s traditional in American politics to fret about “October surprises,” the unanticipated events that throw off years of plans and calculations. October has barely begun, but Hurricane Helene with its terrible destruction already has people wondering, so I wrote some preliminary thoughts about how to assess it at New York:
The upcoming presidential election is so close that it could easily be swayed by external developments. Perhaps a widening war in the Middle East will turn heads in one direction or the other, or possibly a dockworkers strike will shake the steadily improving economy and help Republicans. But the major event we already know about is Hurricane Helene, which took a horrific toll on a swath of coastal and inland communities stretching from Florida to Virginia. Confirmed deaths from the storm have already reached 175, with more likely as rescue crews sift through the wreckage and reach remote areas. Damage is expected to reach as much as $160 billion, making the storm one of the deadliest and costliest in U.S. history.
While the human tragedy of Helene remains front and center, it’s impossible to forget entirely that the nightmare storm hit late in a very close and highly consequential presidential election, and two battleground states (Georgia and North Carolina) were very much affected. Here’s what we know about the possible political fallout.
A lot of what we know about the impact of a major destructive storm on the willingness and ability of citizens to vote comes from Hurricane Sandy, which hammered parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York in October 2012 during the run-up to a reasonably competitive presidential election. Sandy, to be clear, was much more proximate to Election Day (hitting the United States on October 29, eight days before the election) than Helene. On the other hand, early voting has become more significant since 2012, and mail ballots were going out in North Carolina when Helene roared across the area. The major study on the electoral impact of Sandy concluded that the famous “superstorm” did not have a significant impact on voter turnout in 2012.
There’s some talk in North Carolina of flooded polling places that may not be usable any time soon and fears of extended disruption of mail service. However, in all but a few isolated places, there should be plenty of time for recovery in the month before Election Day. Individuals, of course, may experience dislocations and psychological effects that might interfere with all kinds of civic participation, but it will be hard to anticipate the magnitude of such collateral damage.
The Washington Post took a look at the communities experiencing the most death and destruction from Helene and quickly concluded Trump country was most affected:
“As of writing, the federal government has issued disaster declarations in 66 mostly rural counties across four states: 17 in Florida, 11 in Georgia, 25 in North Carolina, and 13 in South Carolina. The declarations follow Helene’s path, from the section of Florida where the state bends along the Gulf of Mexico, through eastern Georgia and into the western Carolinas …
“Overall, counties in those four states that weren’t declared disaster areas voted for Joe Biden by a slight margin. Counties that were declared disaster areas backed Trump by a nearly 16-point margin. In all four states, counties that were included in the federal government’s disaster declarations were more supportive of Trump than were counties that didn’t receive that designation. In Georgia and North Carolina, non-disaster counties gave more votes to Biden.”
The disparate impact is most notable in North Carolina, a red-hot battleground state and the one where Helene’s impact was most heavily concentrated:
“Trump won North Carolina by a bit over one percentage point in 2020. If no one in the counties currently undergoing a Helene-related disaster had voted, Biden would have won by more than three points. If those counties are unable to vote at the same level as they did four years ago by the time Election Day arrives, that could spell trouble for the former president.”
But again, it’s a long time until Election Day.
People who have lost homes or other possessions to high winds and (especially) flooding and/or who lack power or other essentials for an extended period of time are especially dependent on emergency assistance and may be grateful if it arrives expeditiously. Beyond for those immediately affected, the perceived competence and compassion of government entities dealing with disaster relief and recovery efforts can affect how voters assess those in office, particularly in a high-profile situation like that created by Helene.
An American Enterprise Institute study of Sandy suggested that the Obama administration’s response to the storm was a major factor in the incumbent’s ability to win late deciders in 2012, topped by this finding: “Fully 15 percent of the electorate rated Obama’s hurricane response as the most important factor in their vote.”
At the other end of the spectrum, the George W. Bush administration’s tardy, confused, and seemingly indifferent response to the calamity of Hurricane Katrina in August and September of 2005 had an enduringly negative effect on perceptions of his presidency, even though it occurred nowhere close to a national election, as Reid Wilson explained:
“Voters, already turning skeptical over the mismanaged war in Iraq, blamed Bush for the unfolding disaster in New Orleans. Bush’s approval rating hit 45 percent in Gallup surveys the month after Katrina; they never again reached that high. The number of Americans who said the country was headed off on the wrong track rose north of 60 percent and stayed even higher for the rest of Bush’s presidency.”
While FEMA and HUD are typically the federal agencies most involved in disaster response and recovery, presidential leadership in a disaster always gets attention, too, and the risk of negative publicity or graphic displays of unmet needs won’t go away immediately. Bureaucratic backlogs in distributing funds and approving applications for assistance could cause voter unhappiness long after the initial damage is addressed.
Barring unexpected developments or a major series of screwups in the federal response, Hurricane Helene is likely to mark a big moment in the lives of people in and near the areas of devastation but probably won’t much affect their voting behavior. Obviously the campaigns and their allies will need to adjust their get-out-the-vote operations and show some sensitivity to the suffering of people whose lives were turned upside down. We can only hope the election itself and its aftermath don’t add violence and trauma to the damage done.
I am not sure enough people realize the magnitude of the danger that the Evangelist Christian agenda poses for this planet and humanity.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the religious fanatacism of Evangelist Christians has undermined our democracy, inflitrated our political process, and now threatens to take over not only our government, but the entire world. Make no mistake about it, the agenda of Evangelism is no less fanatic or far-reaching that the Islamic religion.
I don’t think enough people realize that the Evangelists consider the war on terrorism a “Holy” war as much as the arab radicals that want Jihad. Unfortunately, the terrible tragedy is that they have been able to take over the Republican party and they have people who aren’t even Christians brainwashed into thinking that Bush’s war on terrorism is the only way to guarantee our safety. The terrible tragedy is that in aligning himself with Evangelists, it is clear that he is aligning himself with people who believe EVERY WORD in the Bible, who believe that the world is in it’s last days and who LOOK FORWARD to ARMAGGEDON!
All people everywhere no matter what their religious or non-religious beliefs need to stand up to this mass insanity that is moving us all to mass suicide!
Although my understanding of God and existence is in the broadest metaphysical sense, and I personally consider myself a Christian, it is of paramount importance, especially for other Christians who believe that Jesus’ only message was love to point out the contrast in the beliefs of non-Evangelist Christians and Evangelism.
CNN has an excellent program about the growing opposition inChristian churches to the Evangelist viewpoint. They interviewed Reverent Barry Lynn, who is heading the organization for the Separation of Church and State.
I do not believe that Jesus would approve of the Evangelist’s agenda. His only, true message was love. Obviously, hatred, prejudice and violence certainly to not go along with loving one’s neighbors and enemies. The whole history of Christianity shows that rigid, dogmatic belief in literal translation of religious doctrines leads to political tyranny, social unheavals and war.
Most people in this modern age realize that people of all religions get their prayers answered, experience healings and miracles. Even those who do not believe in a God with a name have experienced healings and profound life changes through vizualization, affirmations and understanding of the unlimited power of the subconscious mind–a component of the consciousness of everything that lives.
There are many other names for God in addition to Jesus, even in the Christian bible–“Yewah,” and “I am that I am,” are two.
Physicists and cosmologists have discovered through the field of quantum mechanics that everything in the universe is connected. We are on the verge of beginning to understand the connection between the physical and non-physical worlds through scientific verification. If everything is connected it would mean that the passage at the beginning of the book of John in the Bible is true: “God created everything that exists. Nothing exists that He did not create.” It would also mean that some of the most profound teachings of the world’s oldest religions is true — everything is one. It everything is one, and God is Love, it would mean that everything is actually LOVE. People who meditate or who practice deep and continual prayer know that the dichotomies of Love–Hate, Right–Wrong, Good-Evil, Heaven–Hell, lose meaning and dissolve in the all-encompassing truth that sets us free.
It would mean that what Jesus was teaching, that “The Kingdom of Heaven is Within,” is true and that we make our own heaven and hell by our beliefs. If you harbor hatred or belief in violence, death and war, this is the world you will find yourself experiencing.
I do not believe that Jesus would approve of the teaching of Evangelists today. In fact, he would be the most vocal opponent.
Martin Luther, during the period of the Reformation in religious history founded the Luthern church to break away from the rigid, dogmatic teachings of the Catholic church, which was based on the idea that God predetermined human history. On the contrary, Luther believed that perhaps the most important gift given to us by God was FREE WILL. Free will means we have the ability to choose our destiny. A loving God would no longer want us to blow up the planet in ARMAGGEDON, than He would approve of Jim Jones convincing his followers in Guana to take poison in mass suicide.
I am urgently calling on all who understand this extremely important message to spread it to others and to help organize everyone world wide, within the Democratic party and any other groups to stand up and speak out against our own mass slaughter.
I can’t believe how Ono and other observers can say Kerry did a good job. He was running against a president with low approval ratings, a dismal record driving those ratings and a solid majority of the country feeling it was going in the wrong direction.
As I have said OVER AND OVER AND OVER with no response to the elephant in the room (see previous postings on this subject at length) Kerry AND the media systematically refrained from refuting the flipflop spin before it solidified into a national cliche, when both could have easily, including supposed liberals and Democrats in the press who were too busy justifying the lying. Jonathan Chait described in detail in the New Republic Oct 18 what a crock it was, and there were others, basically AFTER the Repub convention, but nothing new by way of info had come forward since May.
Matt Bai also distorted Kerry’s position on terrorism painting him as less willing to confront Al Qaeda militarily, which formed the basis of the press and Republican campaigns against him for the last three weeks (until the Osama video). In that instance the notion that Osama might have been trying to help Bush’s victory at the polls was unmentionable, even though the opposite was asserted all over the place, with Zero evidence.
All in all it was a LOUSY job, with both the Democrats and the press cringing before the agenda of justifying the lying, in an election the Democrats should have won by a landslide, and would have, in a system that wasn’t like Nero-at-the-Olympics, as I have been pointing out on this site since Sept.
I think that if you punch through all of the evangelical programs early Sunday mornings either on television or cable and listen to the sermons these folks have been hearing for the past year, you’ll hear the call to the faithful that probably never attend any church. And they voted against gays, expect an anti-abortion amendment and feel they gave Bush his mandate and expect something in return. This may be the begining of the fractures in the Republican party that promised so much to so many that they will never be able to deliver.
It makes me laugh to think that evangelicals are equated with the “action” of CHURCH ATTENDANCE!
My sister has not attended church in 40 yrs. (she is 60) She sends me the most “prayerful” emails. Don’t you know about internet CONVERSIONS? has nothing to do with going to church. in THe Southland called GEORGIA. I am inundated with women sending me “outreach” emails everyday. few if any of them attend church on any regular basis. It’s a cultural anomoly.
sad commentary.
kr, Chula, Ga
Moral values MEANS moral values …that is indisputable and the result cannot be explained away by igoring it.
The problem with Dr. Abramowitz’s analysis is that he confuses religious church attendance with the Culture War Voter….You do not have to attend church AT ALL to agree with the religious agenda.
So the analytical confusion arises from the unquestioning acceptance of a poor dependent variable definition
What Bush did essetially, and Ruy has said as much, is expand the values definiition to include the War on Terror with a link to the War on IraQ..
In a word, he made his Wars and his Kultur Kamp one in the same populist hot button MORAL VALUES issue.
There are some mis-statements in this post. No-one is speculating that higher turn-out among highly religious people was a significant factor, but by voters mobilized by “moral issues”. In my opinion, Bush appeared more moral to less dedicated church goers because he presented himself as a more dedicated to their value system than they are. In other words, there are a large number of moderate voters who live somewhat outside of traditional church values and feel guilty about it, perceiving Bush as a dedicated Christian protecting a value system that they have abandoned to some extent. This voter could be moderate on gay marriage and abortion but paradoxically feel that this is a morally compromised position.
I agree with a previous poster, that the key to this demographic is to target their assumptions about apparent religiousity and morality. It should be easy to hammer on the theme of “Hate is not a Christian value,” since no opposing candidate would ever disagree. In addition, moderate church goers with shallower ties to their ministers would be more likely to vote against their ministers’ views, especially if they could preserve their own sense of Christian morality in the process.
As it is now, progressive values are interpreted as anti-Christian values, and that’s hurting us even with non-religious people who perceive Christianity as holding the moral high ground.
THis is some good stuff, but ya’ll gotta check out the stuff coming from Amendment Nine. Breathtaking. The last post, Our Way of Life, really hits on a lot of points that this post, and others like it, keep touching on, but never fulfill. http://amendmentnine.blogspot.com
Much of the discussion in this forum I would describe as paralysis analysis. Given the consumer driven landscape that is the U.S.A. and, the focus of this site(polling) marketing principles are the underlying basis of these discussions; i.e., if branding, message, church goers, gay vs. others, fundemendalist, gun owners, regional/rural/urban divides and the ethnic/color/race quairmire are properly balanced we win. Indeed these matters are in the mix and need be fine tuned based on issues of the day, regional needs(farmers are not intrested in subway construction), local interest(small towns need freeway ramps and sewer systems as do urban areas), GOTV, etc. Finally, it is strongly asserted that polls can track these confounding variables and provide meaningful results with appropriate weighting of historical comparative data and other data. Well! Maybe NOT! Much of this approach attempts to deconstruct the complex to arrive at the simple; I believe that finding the realtionhsip of the parts to each is more fruitful. Point being political polling does have limitations and is not the same as research on SUV buyers, actual or potential.
Problem? Much of the discussion is based on the assumption that all voter segments have gotten attention sufficient to counter balance the opposition base voters. Thus, my view being based on the notion of paralysis analysis which is to assert that the discussion does not encompass the large voting segments that have been long overlooked, primarly rural and semi-rural voters. I would assert this is more significant than all other current day favorites of the conventional wisdom crowds; simply the Democratic party organizational and institutionally does not have the contact with these voters as in the past.
Finally, explanations on 11/02/04 exit polling is troubling as no explanation I have heard makes sense, and these rationals are on today’s spin circuit. I express my concerns via a question: among so-called “early or premature” state and local exit polls who were consistent with the final exit polls that were weighted to reflect the vote totals? In other words how consistent are the slices of the day with the whole of the day with the only variable being Bush or Kerry? In short this may offer explanations that make more sense and cure some of the likly debates on the accuracy and effects of these exit polls. Problem? The curent discussion on exit polls offers too much confusion.
I agree with the comments by Ono that we need to look at state by state composition of the electorate and compare what changed between 2000 and 2004. If you look here you will see that regular churchgoers were a SMALLER PORTION OF THE ELECTORATE in 2004 than 2000 in Ohio. The link below shows the exit polls for Ohio for 2000
http://www.msnbc.com/m/d2k/g/polls.asp?office=P&state=OH
you can compare this with the exit poll information available from MSNBC for 2004. This leaves me with the belief that what happened last Tuesday was not that more churchgoing people showed up at the polls, but that people who showed up at the polls were more likely to vote for Bush for a variety of reasons.
We also should be skeptical about the link between regular church attendance and propensity to vote based on “moral values. ”
One thing to keep in mind with all the buzz about “moral values” being the issue that determined the election, in Ohio there were twice as many people who attend church at least once a week as there were people who ranked “moral values” as the primary issue deciding their vote.
This means that at least half of regular church attenders did not vote based on “moral values.” It would be interesting to get a breakdown of what issues regular church goers did vote on and also the characteristics of those voting based on “morality” What proportion are regular churchgoers, African Americans etc.
Does anyone know a database of exit polling information that would allow me to search on the other characteristics of the “moral values” voters?
When I read comments like these, I become afraid that Democrats are going to become a permanent minority. Trying to find some technical “fix” to the problems of this election are like the French building the Maginot line to fight the last war.
If there was a lesson from this election it’s that technological fixes GOTV, increasing turnout, etc. aren’t the answer. It’s the “vision thing”. Unless the Democrats can convince lower income voters that we stand for something more than “fiscal restraint” or leaving social security alone or anti whatever Bush is doing, the Republicans will get to finish turning this country back to the glory days of the Hoover administration.
There’s more spin going on than a top: The actual numbers weren’t really so bad, Bush didn’t really turn out that many more evangelicals, religion wasn’t what doomed Kerry, it never really was winnable for other reasons, etc.
All of these arguments are rationalizations which only obscure the blindingly clear reality. The Democratic party has become bankrupt of ideas. That’s why we lost.
Because we didn’t offer working people in this country any reason to vote for Kerry. “Anybody-But-Bush” wasn’t nearly enough.
Please stop all the happy-talk and spin. Unless major reforms are made in the party it will be much worse in 2006-08. I’m no fan of Nader, but he’s right on this: unless the Democratic party can compete in the South, the Republicans “will roll them right into the Pacific ocean.” They’ll organize a total monopoly all the way down to the municipal level in every red state. And they’ll appoint judges who will support every effort to subvert Democracy.
We have a tremendous opportunity over the next 4 years to stand for something meaningful. Remember that next time, the Republican candidate DOESN’T HAVE to run as Bush did. He could have run as a “compassionate conservative” instead of a scorched earth campaign and won 55% of the vote. So, technical fixes aimed at picking up a few constituencies here or there won’t work.
When you add up Alan’s church-goer percentages, it seems to me that they are not so insignificant. But people do lie about their church attendance, so that may render these figures less than useful.
As an occasional, OK, rare church-attender, I’ve noticed something more frequent attenders may have overlooked: Conservative preachers talk a lot about Jesus, but they don’t quote him much. I suspect this is because Jesus had zilch to say about guns, gays or abortion. But he had a lot to say about peace, forgiveness, religious hypocracy, poverty, inclusiveness and sharing. The evangelicals need to be called on this more often by our candidates and campaigns.
Yet, Alan is quite right that we can’t blame it all on the evangelical GOTV. Bush did substantially increase his piece of the African American vote, from 9 percent in 2K to 11 percent in 2K4, according to the exit polls published by CNN. The La Times exit polls found an even bigger increase, to 14%, which is a 55%+ increase in Bush’s take of the Black vote. I saw one reference to 16% in Ohio, but couldn’t find the source.
Bush also got a significant increase among the high-turnout seniors. My hunch is that a good many of them were turned off by the Mary Cheney stuff and Teresa’s lame remark about Laura Bush. I think that may have hurt us with more than a few on-the-fence mothers, as well.
And what about that huge Bush take of Latinos?
Seems to me we need a task force of the Party’s best thinkers and organizers to work on each of these constituencies, and come up with a credible battle plan for the ’06 congressional elections.
Thank you Mr. Abramowitz for hammering a few more nails into the coffin of the conventional wisdom that emerged immediately after the election.
I would add that there was probably little Kerry could have done in this election to win Florida, save perhaps running as a liberal hawk, which just wasn’t in his political DNA.
The Democrats should be rehashing the question of Ohio though, because not only was it winnable this year, Democrats need to not repeat the same mistake they made there in order to be viable nationally.
What I’m talking about of course is winning back white, blue collar Reagan Democrats, who could with the right policies be persuaded to vote their economic rather than cultural interests.
We all the know the problem. It dates back at least to 1980, if not all the way to 1968. Between a Republican party who offers these voters noxious economic policies and cultural conservativism and a Democratic Party that offers them slightly less noxious (but still noxious) economic policies, and cultural liberalism, they tend to choose the former.
In Ohio, where 200,000 jobs (many of them in manufacturing) have been lost in the last four years, Kerry should have been able to make significant inroads into moderate white working class voters. But he didn’t.
This is a demographic that is not easily fooled, and understood that on economic and trade questions there was really is little difference between John Kerry and George W Bush. Both were for “retraining.” Both were for middle class tax cuts. And Kerry’s plan to “stop rewarding companies for shipping jobs overseas” was incomprehensible to most and interpreted as little more than a gesture (which it was.)
In fact the only candidate with a realistic and substantive plan for addressing the problem of outsourcing was Joe Lieberman, who not only campaigned on the issue of Asian currency manipulation, but introduced legislation in the senate last year to punish the practice.
Now is not really the place to consider the full history of Japanese and now Chinese and Indian currency manipulation, and the incredibly destructive effect it has had upon American manufacturing and textiles in the past 30+ years (after the collapse of Bretton Woods) but no single act by the federal government would do more to level the playing field between American and Asian manufacturers, and genuinely open markets in Asia to American goods.
Unlike most of the populist blather out there about outsourcing, ending Asian currency manipulation has tremendous potential for protecting and creating many, many thousands of jobs in this country – and not just in manufacturing and textiles.
Its not exactly bumper sticker material, but its not so hard to understand that the importance of addressing this problem can’t be clearly and succinctly communicated to voters. Its a shame that the Kerry campaign didn’t try.
Ruy’s comments and the other responses all assume that the data are legit. You no doubt know that the results in FL and OH are being increasingly questioned. And we just don’t know how many voters were forced to walk away in those 2 states because of the long lines.
As David Brooks pointed out in today’s NY Times, it was NOT an increase in even the proportion of religious voters that Bush got. He concluded that therefore the vote was a mandate for Bush’s policies. Problem is, solid majorities felt that the country is moving in the wrong direction, and Bush is NOT a popular president. So what’s the problem? Exactly what I’ve been saying — Kerry let the Bush campaign generate unease about him as a candidate; and the chorus of hounds that didn’t bark in the mass media and the Democratic Party on the flipflop spin and the Bai distortion, about which I have said much in particular, the two central nodes of the campaign against Kerry, guaranteed that those doubts would carry the day. The DLC Democrats are too interested in ‘getting with the program’. They and the media are unwilling to challenge these agendae. Democrats need to be led specifically by those who WILL challenge the agenda instead of basically’ reporting for duty’, generating a whole lot of noise but not defending on the crucial fronts — predictably letting the Republicans win.
Time after time I pointed out while everyone was spinning the polls optimistically that there was a machine agenda and that the Democrats and the media weren’t challenging it. What happened is the natural result of all that tramoya (jury rigging of appearances). No one was willing to seriously consider those notions then, as it wasn’t getting with the program, and they don’t want to consider it now, for the same reason. Problem is, the program sucks and most Americans have had to be manipulated in 1988 and 2000 (being talked to like third graders throughout the latter, while the Gore campaign worried about earth tones). What’s the point of a Democratic Party that isn’t AUTHENTICALLY fighting to win? Voters were herded to DLC Democrat Kerry from Dean because it was said Kerry was the man to beat Bush. Then, when it came to the flipflop spin and being painted falsely as soft on terror, he AND the media sat on their hands. It was a scam. And as is always the case, when you are in charge of the party, and you totally screw up, you decide what the problem is and who can be heard from.
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Much is being said about the possibility (according to Laurence Tribe) of having Five voters in Ohio demand a recount. And at Tompaine.com it has been argued that Kerry won Ohio. Maybe the DLC Democrats could redeem themselves by at least putting up a fight, but you can bank on them rolling over just like they were obviously doing BEFORE the election
It really doesn’t matter if fewer or more evangelicals voted this time around. What matters is that Bush would NOT have won had they stayed at home. They didn’t stay at home. They voted. And whether the conventional wisdom that they, alone, were the deciding factor last Tuesday holds or doesn’t hold with the pundits, it WILL hold within their ranks. And they will demand palpable results this time, and this time they have a president who shares their point of view on key issues–according to most accounts.
So Bush will have no qualms about giving the evangelicals their reward–judicial nominees who will begin the process of striking down Roe v. Wade and rolling back gains made toward gay and lesbian civil rights. Evangelicals believe the Republican Party and the President are indebted to them, and W. had better deliver or risk losing this sizable and, in a close election, decisive edge they provide.
A couple of questions for Ruy:
1) I’ve seen conflicting reports about the electoral behavior of Catholics. Were Catholic voters evenly divided or did they slightly favor Bush? I’ve been arguing that for all pratical purposes, there no longer is a “Catholic vote” because Catholic voting behavior typically is in line with the voting behavior of America as a whole. It’s not 1940 or 50, when Catholics were primarily blue-collar sons and daughters of immigrants, clustered in big cities and industrial company towns. Catholics are a very diverse population today. An example: At my brother-in-law’s country club, the club president, (a retired stock-broker,) and the greenskeeper, (a Mexican immigrant,) both belong to the same Catholic parish.
2) Was this the first presidential election in which the GOP did not win among college graduates?
It’s not about being religious. It’s about being bigots. However calling it “moral values” sounds much nicer.
In Ohio Bush received about 96% of the White Evangelistic
Vote. The Right Wing (White Evangelistic) group is a HUGE
voting group which heavily supports the Republican Agenda.
The Democratics, are going to have to find some way to
off set this group or find some way to appeal to them in
thier agenda.
One good possibility is to select candidates from the southern or mid-western areas who share there views.
There has to be a better way to analyze this than general national percentages. In the very red southeast Ohio, Rove bombarded the Christian airwaves with Bush homophibic ads. This went completely under the radar because only certain kinds of Christians listen those stations. It was the same in parts of Iowa from what I understand. This way Rove brought out rural voters to get him over the hump in OH and IA.
In places like OH, Bush was losing votes, he had to make them up somewhere and he got the evangelicals in the rural areas to turn out in larger numbers.
I think doing the comparative stats on a county by county basis in places like OH, IA and WI would yield better results. I don’t think it is instructive to look at the national vote.
Another thing is that I did work among Catholics and I know for a fact, that many left of center, moderate and conservative Catholics who just about threw up at the mention of Bush, vote for him, because they perceived that the Democratic Party and Kerry were extreme on abortion. And I might add that over 3/4 of Catholics are pro-choice!
The other thing about your analysis is that it doesn’t distinguish between Catholic and Protestant. Kerry lost the nationwide Catholic vote by 2% but again, that tells us nothing. He lost it big in Oh (55-44), FL (57-42), MD (57-42)!!!!, (VA 69-31). On the other hand, in the battle ground states, excepting OH and FL, Kerry won the Catholic vote in MI, PA, WI, MN, IA (53%) and was -1% in MO, which was ground zero in the communion controversy.
My explanation, w/o evidence I admint, is that the focus in OH was on jobs and guns and the values and Catholic issue was not met head on. In WI where the economy was not quite as bad, it was clear that Kerry had to pitch more than stopping outsourcing. So I think Kerry lost the OH Catholic vote, not because they are different, but because the religious values thing may not have been met head on there. As for FL, I think it is the Cuban vote and the natural hurricaine dynamic and that it is the south. MD was not a battleground state, but I think because the anti-Kerry Catholic charges were not met head on there, Catholics simply absorbed the lies they heard from the Catholic Right.
In the southwest, Kerry got 63% of the Catholic vote in New Mexico and 52% in Nevada. These are huge numbers in light of the attacks by the Catholic Right and the Bishops. He also got 45% of weekly Mass attendees, in NM it was about 53%. So Kerry did great on the whole with Catholics.
As for White evangelicals, I haven’t checked the numbers, but I am willing to bet my VP spot on the 2008 Democratic ticket, that Kerry got his butt handed to him uniformly and I think that distorts the picture.
I’m not sure what the conclusion is to my ramble. I guess it is that the morals/values, religious factor was huge. I think a county by county analysis in rural areas may yield a better picture. I also think separating out Catholic v Protestant also yields a better picture.
And for me, the general moral of the story is that Kerry came within 30-50,000 votes of the Presidency. I think he did a great job. The 2004 result does not require tearing down anything, I think it requires adding to our coalition. I think Kerry has shown that he can reach the moderate Catholic vote when he addresses them directly and I think moderate Catholics are our Rovian 4 million. They are naturally left of center on social issues, they are pro-choice! anti-death penalty, anti-war, and they vote. Catholics, though 20% of the general population, were 27%!! of the electorate on Nov. 2.
I don’t have access to the data, but it looked to me like those gains among the non-religious were basically gains among the very rich. Looking at the income data, voters making above 100k made up 18% of the voting population, as opposed to 15% of the voting population in 2000, and went harder for Bush than in 2000 (58 to 41 vs 54 to 43 for Bush). It looks like that is a real increase, not just due to rising incomes (but I’d love to see real data on that.)
This pro-Bush swing among the 100k and up group is pretty different from the weekly plus church attenders, whose vote margin was basically unchanged (64 to 36 Bush).
My take is that high turnout means that those who are already very likely to turn out (churchgoers, the wealthy, the educated) were the most likely to increase their turnout by the highest absolute numbers — but that the real story of this election (at least nationally) is taxes and the wealthy — not necessarily gay marriage. Of course, state data may refute that claim — but I can’t get 2000 state exit polls to check!
So the group that Rove claimed to have spent the most time and effort to turn out—-the 4 million white evangelical Christians who didn’t “show up” in 2000—-did not provide proportionally increased support for Bush in 2004? There was no increase in turnout rate among this demographic from 2000? Did Rove and Ralph Reed fail to increase the turnout of their principal targeted voter group? I don’t believe it.
But the question remains, were these voters attracted BECAUSE of Bush’s “moral” or “religious” qualities (and believe me they deserve quotations) or was it Security as the Judis article indicates?
And why did the Seniors side with Bush, especially since so many seemed to hate the medicare bill?