Who reelected Bush?
WASHINGTON
GIVE OR TAKE a nuance, President Bush was reelected because he was seen as a strong, consistent force in the battle against terrorism by just enough voters who disagree with him on most other major issues.
That is most strikingly so in the case of female voters, but also true among Latinos as well. In each case, Bush lost to John Kerry, but he did better than he did against Al Gore four years ago, and the improvement is enough to account for his popular vote majority.
After that, the situation gets murky, but anyone who claims to have found a genuine, governing mandate for anything beyond fighting terrorism vigorously is blowing smoke.
Less than two weeks after a close election, it has taken a little time for the facts about the election to challenge the post-voting hype and hyperventilation on all political sides. That is not surprising, given that the campaign was ugly and America remains closely divided.
Two main elements of the initial noise are fading: that crazed Christians driven by hatred of gay people reelected the president (they helped, but they didn't decide it), and that Bush rode a rising tide of rural and small-town voters (he didn't). There will always be a spirited argument over what a presidential campaign really is -- a long narrative about a battle between two candidates or a referendum on the condition of the country or an incumbent. I suspect it's a mixture. To the extent it is, I found an interesting question in the survey of voters on Election Day by the Los Angeles Times about when they made their decisions.
Among the 47 percent who said they always knew whom they were for, Bush led Kerry by 65-34 percent; among the 43 percent who decided during the campaign, Kerry won by 62-37 percent, and he led by roughly 6 points among the roughly 10 percent who said they decided over the last weekend or on Election Day. That suggests a reelection landscape that favored Bush, but a campaign and an election year that featured a mess in Iraq and economic uncertainty, along with poor responses to each by the president. Things got truly close after Bush's confidence-shaking performance in the three debates, along with Vice President Dick Cheney's inability to appeal to moderate, loosely affiliated voters in his high-ratings debate with John Edwards.
One element in a sober evaluation of a presidential election ought to be an examination of what changed from the previous election, especially if it involves the same person. That is the proper use of so-called exit polls, in existence since 1976 and designed to help answer the question "Why?" after the fact, not "Who?" while the real polls are still open. We now have two of them -- one done for the TV networks and major print organizations, the other done for the Times.
In analyzing the results -- with a few millions votes still to be counted (I hope), Bush's margin is roughly 3.5 million out of roughly 120 million ballots cast, or 3 percent -- women really stand out.
Four years ago, the gender gap was alive. According to the networks' exit poll, Bush beat Gore by 11 points among men and lost to him by 11 points among women (The LA Times's gaps were slightly less). This time around, with a slightly more female electorate, Kerry did the same or a bit better among men, but his margin shrank to at most three points among women.
Bush also can take pride in his higher percentage among Latinos, 5-plus percent of the electorate, where his share of the vote increased from the mid-30s to the low-40s. However, after discounting for the sure-thing states of California and Texas, the actual impact on the results appears largely confined to New Mexico.
Turnout was gratifyingly way up. But contrary to first impressions, Bush did less well than he did in 2000 in rural and small town precincts than he did in urban and suburban ones. Turnout was also no more up in the 11 states with civil union and marriage-related referendums than in the rest of the country. Turnout was also up somewhat higher in uncontested red states than it was in clearly blue ones.
The networks' poll of decisive issues for voters showed that terrorism and the imprecise "moral values" were gigantic Bush pluses, but that Iraq and the economy broke almost as decisively for Kerry.
Terrorism was not the top decisive issue, but it appears to have been so at the margin of victory. To be perverse, you could say that Bush's advantage came from liberal, urban, or suburban prochoice women who think we were wrong to invade Iraq, rarely if ever go to church, are worried about healthcare, and think the economy is in the toilet. Most of the rest came from gay people, 23 percent of whom helped reelect the president. They are all concerned about terrorism and unsure about Kerry. Go figure, but don't talk to me about mandate.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. 