How did Bush Win?

The Bush administration will be in charge until 2008, with some changes in the cabinet. On the other side, the Democrats will be busy, trying to decide whether they should go with Hillary Clinton or locate another candidate, preferable from the South.

The Democrats left the presidency to the Republicans by nominating John Kerry, as the Republicans left it to the Democrats in 1996 by electing Bob Dole as Like republicans nominated Bob Dole against the Democrats.

Most Democrats want to see Hillary Clinton as their candidate in the 2008 elections. The key question about Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is whether America is ready for a woman president or not. We will see this within the next four years.

Before the elections, most observers agreed that the candidate who wins Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania would win the presidency. As we all know by now, Florida and Ohio remained in President Bush’s column, while Pennsylvanians voted for Kerry.

While President Bush won the election with a wide margin of 3.5 million votes, he also won the majority in the Senate and Congress.

First of all, the voter turnout was significantly high, with 10 million Americans from both sides voting for the first time.  According to the statistics, the Democrats won majority of votes from young college students, while the Republicans were favored by conservatives and religious groups. Most analysts believe that these groups got Mr. Bush’s conservative messages about family values and went to vote for the first time. This factor affected the election results.

Let’s now leave the conventional thinking and look at some other figures. While 35 percent of Hispanic voters favored Bush in 2000, this ratio increased to 44% in 2004. 49 percent of American women voted for Bush in 2000. In 2004, this ratio was 55 percent. Especially married women or mothers seem to have voted for the President.

Finally, a detail about the State of Florida; four devastating hurricanes hit the region called Route 4 in Orlando. This region lies along the northern and southern areas of Route 4, which starts from Daytona and ends in Tampa.

This region had voted for Al Gore in the 2000 elections. After the hurricanes, President Bush visited all regions that were affected with the disaster. He met with the suffering locals and saw the results of these political efforts at the polls: a 300 thousand vote margin. On the other hand Senator Kerry did not pay visits to this region, probably going with his advisors’ recommendations. He was probably wary of potential criticisms that he was trying to gain political profits from a natural disaster.

We have to be fair, though. Maybe Mr. Kerry did visit the region, but the national TV channels did not show him doing that. Maybe he left this job to President Bush in the name of national unity in hard days. With this decision, the Democrats lost the Route 4 corridor with a margin of 300 thousand votes and practically conceded the 27 electoral votes from Florida to the Republicans.  

(December 2004, 15th Issue)