the blue revolution

David Brooks (via Daimnation) and Paul Freedman (via Insta) add weight to the "It's not just moral values" meme.

The reality is that this was a broad victory for the president. Bush did better this year than he did in 2000 in 45 out of the 50 states. He did better in New York, Connecticut and, amazingly, Massachusetts. That's hardly the Bible Belt. Bush, on the other hand, did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums.
(Brooks)

If the morality gap doesn't explain Bush's re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry.
(Freedman)

And when even Andrew Sullivan agrees with it (via Daimnation), you know that there's a point here.

The BBC, though, still hasn't gotten the message. No surprise there. But at the end of the day, the numbers don't lie (unless, of course, the exit polls were way off, which is totally possible, but that doesn't hurt my argument):

Defining Issue	Issue share of total	Issue share to Bush	Bush's share from issue
Terrorism	19%	86%	16.34%
Moral Values	22%	80%	17.76%

One and a half measly percent, and the press is going ga-ga. Geez.

Perhaps it's because the Governator hasn't been in the political sphere as long, but I'm surprised at the low level of support that he has for a presidential bid in 2008. I had expected him to be the best competitor against Hillary Clinton (who I'm positive will win the Democratic nomination), but it appears that most people do not want him to run for president (yet).

As for the two who appear to be the biggest front-runners right now, I'm leaning towards Giuliani, although both are probably much more moderate than my own preferences. McCain, though, does have that annoying populist twitch about him.

But then this is way too early to be deciding on whom to support in four years. Things will probably be very different by then.

Now that the Election 2004 dust has settled, I can say some things to stir it up again.

This was not a close election.
When Bush wins Ohio by nearly 140000 votes and Florida by nearly four million, there really isn't much hope for a Kerry win. More importantly from the shut-up-Democrats point of view is the first popular vote majority since 1988 and an increase for Bush's share of the votes in 87% of all counties (from yesterday's NYTimes). Put in state terms, the result is even more staggering: here is a map, with the states where Bush's share of the popular vote increased in red (note that I didn't bother with a comparable blue map because Nader voters swinging to Kerry). With the exception of New England, most of the white states (where Bush's share fell) can probably be attributed to voter apathy in races where Bush is sure to win anyways. The electoral math wasn't working in Kerry's favour, and the popular vote total suggests a major mandate from the people.

The election was not won on the Religious Right.
Andrew Coyne has already done the numbers on this one in "Invasion of the theo-cons".

The exit polls are an inaccurate tool for predicting the winner.
Partially correct: exit polls are probably an inaccurate tool for gauging anything. The only reason why nobody disputes the other results from the exit polls is because nobody marks on their ballot sheets the reasons they vote and what ethnicity they are and so on. Which is why I actually take the "Religious Right won it" argument with a grain of salt.

And if you want to know why I haven't been as upbeat as I should be, read this Ubyssey article and you get an idea of the atmosphere here. I'm sure that I would enjoy it more but when you're physically tired and others are cranky and bitching, you're prone to get infected, but for different reasons ("Dammit, stop complaining," I said to myself.) But then again, actually reading how pathetic some of these people are has totally reversed my spirits. And what an appropriate way to start off the weekend!

In my prediction, I only missed Wisconsin, and that was only by a measly 11813 votes (0.4%). Not bad, I must say.

Details on my take on Election 2004 to come later (today?).

23:53 PST: Gonna call it quits at Campaign HQ and watch the rest at the hotel.

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22:46 PST: I took a couple of pictures of the venue a few hours ago, before the crowd built up.

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22:35 PST: The WA governor's race is really tight. Here's the scene when Dino Rossi took the slimmest of leads.

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22:17 PST: While I was away, Fox called AK for Bush (pretty easy call). This means that Fox has Bush at 269 electoral votes.

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21:42 PST: Fox News calls Ohio for George W. Bush.

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21:40 PST: 77% of all SD precincts reporting and Daschle is behind Thune by >3700 votes.

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21:35 PST: In OH, Clark County is currently at Bush 51% Kerry 49%. The folks at the Guardian can officially begin kicking themselves.

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21:22 PST: Fox belatedly calls FL. Still pretty tense over OH. Bush called in CO by ABC.

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20:52 PST: Crowd goes wild that Daschle is lagging.

Here is Bush winning Florida:

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20:39 PST: It's about time! FL goes red: Bush 237 Kerry 188 on ABC. Crowd goes berserk.

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20:34 PST: Bush is ahead by 1% in WA. 6% of precincts reporting.

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20:32 PST: By the way, there's no wi-fi here, but there is a table off to the side with tons of Internet connections and 8 laptops attached (including my own). Current count on Yahoo is Bush 210 Kerry 199.

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20:10 PST: It's weird having the WA GOP chair talk up the crowd as "west coast blues" start coming in on the TVs behind him.

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19:57 PST: Dammit Pennsylvania went blue.

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19:51 PST: They just called NM AZ for Bush. =)

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19:34 PST: A review of my day so far.

• Left UBC with fellow Young Tories at about 10 AM.
• Got to Bellevue at about 2 PM.
• Reached the call centre soon after. Did last-minute get-out-the-vote calling for about two hours or so.
• Left some time after 4 PM. Back to hotel room to watch some forbidden TV (in Canada).
• Got to the Meydenbauer at about 10 to 7.

They just showed updated OH and FL counts and people are cheering.

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I'm at the Meydenbauer Center right now, HQ for the Washington state GOP campaign night. Current count on Yahoo: Bush 192, Kerry 112.

Predictions using actual analytic means have been done so many times by so many people that I am not going to add myself to the mix. My prediction is purely based on copying an outline map into Microsoft Paint and starting to fill in the states blue and red, which essentially combines all my biases and intuitions into one fluid process.

My results: Bush/Cheney 296, Kerry/Edwards 242.

I'll be heading south of the border tomorrow to GOP HQ in WA with the UBC Young Conservatives. Speaking of the UBCYC, it appears that our site have been attracting some interesting visitors lately. My opinion is that Joel deserves to be president just to piss these guys off.

If they have Wi-Fi there (and they will, dammit!), there'll be some fun liveblogging action here tomorrow night!