Election 2004's Myths & Mysteries
By Sam Parry
December 10, 2004
George W. Bush’s record-smashing vote totals in Election 2004 have two possible explanations that the mainstream press has kept off the table: the first is that somehow the vote tallies were manipulated; the second is that negative campaigning is far more effective than almost anyone wants to admit.
Without looking at these two options, it’s simply hard to comprehend how Bush got 61.7 million votes, shattering Ronald Reagan’s old record of 54.5 million from his landslide victory in 1984. What makes Bush’s numbers even more incredible is that he got them as John Kerry also surpassed Reagan’s record with 58.5 million votes.
Comparing Nov. 2’s numbers with Election 2000 is equally stunning. In four years, Bush increased his total vote by about 22 percent, even as Kerry topped Al Gore’s margin by almost 15 percent. In earlier presidential elections when one party has managed to boost its vote by 20 percent or so, the other party has suffered widespread defections.
But what is perhaps most astounding is that Bush chalked up these vote totals after compiling one of the poorest records of any recent president: a sluggish economy, huge government deficits, a weakening dollar, a catastrophic war in Iraq and loss of respect for the United States around the world.
‘Values’ Voters?
Many political pundits have put forth the explanation that Evangelical voters assured Bush a second term because they see him as the defender of moral “values.”
But this conventional narrative can’t fully account for Bush’s 2004 vote. No less an expert than Bush’s political guru Karl Rove estimated that 4 million Evangelical voters stayed home in 2000, meaning that even if they all voted in 2004 for Bush, that would still leave more than 7 million votes to explain.
Plus, think back on Election 2000 when the Republican base was burning with a fierce determination to oust the hated Clinton-Gore crowd. Why would millions of Republican voters stay home in 2000, yet flood the polling places in 2004 despite the discouraging results of Bush’s first term and the turnout enthusiasm on the Democratic side?
Yet, instead of working to make sense of Bush’s vote totals and examining the extraordinary outcome on a county-by-county basis, the mainstream news media has mostly dismissed questions of voting fraud as Internet-driven “conspiracy theories.”
Democratic Myths
Besides the mysteries of Bush’s vote totals, there were Democratic myths that exploded on Nov. 2.
The Democrats’ axiom that high turnout virtually guarantees a Democratic win proved false – assuming, of course, that Bush’s votes were real. Based on the official results, it would seem that expensive voter registration drives by Democrats and liberal groups may have upped the Democratic turnout, but also served as a rallying point to get millions of new Republican voters to the polls.
The lesson appears to be that the mechanical function of registering new voters – while a worthy undertaking in its own right – cannot substitute for the lack of a strong message or a media infrastructure to communicate with voters. If Bush did bring in almost 62 million votes, then a big part of the answer must be that the potent conservative media machine kept the Republican base energized and focused.
That reality should be a factor in Democratic post-mortems and give pause to liberal voter-registration groups that already are calling for simply more of the same for 2006 and 2008. The Democrats invite a repeat of 2004 if they simply go for a bigger investment in “grassroots organizing,” while ignoring the lack of a left-of-center media apparatus that can even begin to match up with the potent conservative media.
Another bracing lesson for Democrats is that Bush amassed his vote total after waging an overwhelmingly negative campaign built more around tearing down John Kerry than touting Bush’s own achievements. Bush’s extraordinary numbers flew in the face of the old political adage that negative campaigns only succeed by depressing the overall vote, not by inspiring more voters to go to the polls
