Turns out that according to the exit polls the case for crediting Bush's victory to the fundamentalist Christian right is pretty weak. (This is becoming the consensus around many of the political blogs as well). The fraction of voters who attended church regularly (once a week or more) didn't change between the 2000 and 2004 elections. And Bush's support among them increased by only a percentage point. His biggest growth in support actually came among voters who stated they never attended church, where his vote share grew by 4%.
Granted, the 04 exit polls are, ummm, a little untrustworthy (anyone else spend the afternoon of election day ecstatic over the leaked poll numbers?). But they're the best we have and appeared approximately accurate by the end of the day. Plus the poll findings are backed up by the state election results, where Bush's share didn't increase more in states with e.g. gay marriage amendments than it did in other states.
So what was it then? My answer: militarism. Bush called on the old strain of mindless American jingoism that demands unquestioning loyalty to a government "at war". A telling little number from the exit polls: Kerry easily won voters who identified "Iraq" as their most important issue, while Bush swept the voters who went with "terrorism". That is, people who based their vote on the major strategic decision Bush actually made in his fight against terrorism voted for Kerry. But Bush voters responded to the general theme of "terrorism", with its accompanying rhetoric of "good vs. evil" and "strength" (Bush also won the "strong leader" vote by a landslide). The need for violence in defense of the homeland appeals directly to the reptilian brain, short-circuiting rational assessment. This ain't no foreign policy seminar, it's about standing behind our national daddy.
Another issue: the very large number of ideological conservatives at the polls. Over one third of voters identify as ideologically conservative, only about a fifth as liberal. Those who identify as "moderate" have gone for the Democratic candidate in recent presidential elections, but they have to do so by a landslide to make up for the size of the conservative base. The post-60s realignment and the institutions the conservative movement created to support that realignment have given them a built in ideological advantage. This is a conservative country. (In a way that goes beyond the Christian fundamentalists, who are only one part of the conservative coalition). A "wartime" situation in a conservative nation...a Democratic victory would always have been an uphill battle.
More throughout the week on how this relates to the "whither the left" debates that political junkies like me invariably waste our time on after a lost election...
Marcus Stanley
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