100 Things About the Election, Part IV

The continuing series of things I noticed during and after Election Day that I considered important. In no particular order... 32. The left continues to spin Bush's victory as being based on antipathy to gay marriage. Instapundit has a pretty good roundup of articles and stories that illustrate that the decisive issue was terrorism. In particular, check out Paul Freedman in Slate... More to the point, the morality gap didn't decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you're trying to explain why the president's vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don't help. 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.

Hey, those are just the facts, folks.

33. I wonder if anyone in the Kerry campaign was still sticking around, waiting for the final result in Iowa.

34. I'm definitely engaging in some post-election gloating here, I know. But I've tried really hard to avoid it in face-to-face meetings with folks whom I know are Kerry supporters -- you know, the folks whop spent the end of last week with a dazed look on their face (in Philly, we call this the Eric Lindros face). But some of the moaning is fun to watch. Earlier this week, I listened to someone complain that no one they knew voted for Bush, which made me question my own existence for a few seconds. Seriously, I think I'm taking far too much pleasure in this. But I'll try and leave it here on the blog.

35. My folks stayed up until 3 AM to watch the election returns. Yes, now you know why I'm so screwed up.