A Republican Country: Did the 2004 U.S. election signal a party realignment
Wallison, Peter J.
A REPUBLICAN COUNTRY *** DID THE 2004 U.S. ELECTION SIGNAL A PARTY REALIGNMENT? BY PETER J. WALLISON
...The hatred of Bush was so strong among Democrats that they didn't need much energizing to support their ticket, and despite Kerry's equivocation about Iraq the collapse of the Nader campaign shows that virtually all liberal voters returned to the Democratic line to vote for him...
...Significantly, of the 22 percent of the voters who said in the exit polls that they were "very worried" about terrorism, 56 percent of them voted for Kerry...
...Several recent elections, of course, are consistent with the growing Republican support seen in the polls...
...Forty-six percent said yes, and they went for Kerry by 66-33...
...A realigning election does not have to involve a convulsive event, and frequently is only visible in retrospect...
...However, barring events of this kind, and assuming the Democrats remain captives of the left, the results of the 2004 presidential election seem consistent with a trend toward the Republican Party that has all the earmarks of the early stages of a long-term political realignment...
...Other polls, when independents have been pressed to state a preference, have found a dead heat at 45 percent each...
...What historians mean by a realignment is a major change in political allegiances that installs a new party or governing coalition in power for a significant period of time, perhaps a generation or more...
...In 2004, when Gallup assessed the party identification of 34,000 individuals it had interviewed, it found that 34 percent called themselves Republicans and the same percentage identified themselves as Democrats...
...On the other hand, it may well be that the country is gradually returning to the views that dominated the period before the election of 1936, and that this trend is driving the increasing support for the Republican Party...
...This, as it turned out, reflected a serious misunderstanding of both the Bush strategy and political conditions in the country Although the head-to-head polls were close until Election Day, with some showing Kerry ahead, Bush won by over 3 million popular votes and with 286 electoral votes out of the 270 needed for election...
...For the first time in 80 years, the Republicans have firm control of the presidency and both Houses of Congress...
...electorate has been moving gradually to the Republican Party...
...Moreover, the issues and news environment in which the election was held seemed to favor the Democrats...
...Although 81 percent of voters in the exit polls went to church either weekly (41 percent) or occasionally (40 percent), Kerry got 39 percent of those who attended church weekly, and Bush got 36 percent of those who never attended church...
...In arguably winning all three debates—or at least going toe to toe with Bush and more than holding his own—Kerry certainly showed enough capability to meet this burden...
...by 1996, 63 percent favored a smaller government and only 32 percent favored a larger government...
...The Right track/Wrong track numbers only confirmed a sour mood in the U.S...
...The possibility of a gradual realignment of the parties is reflected in the Harris poll on party identification, taken consistently since the 1970s...
...Indeed, by all conventional analysis, Bush should also have lost decisively in 2000, when he ran against an incumbent vice president at a time of unprecedented prosperity, and OCTOBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 21 A REPUBLICAN COUNTRY before most Americans had even heard of Osama bin Laden...
...But independent expenditures put the Democrat far ahead...
...Polls showed that voters believed he was more intelligent than Bush, and that he won all three debates...
...Bush won among voters who said they were "somewhat worried" (53 percent), "not too worried" (19 percent), and "not at all worried" (5 percent...
...that government can be a force for good but frequently doesn't achieve it...
...And the exit polls from the 2004 election showed a tie in turnout, with each party at 37 percent...
...Whether it's a tie or the Democrats are slightly ahead, this seems to reflect enormous growth for the Republicans since the 1970s...
...To be sure, Bush beat Kerry, 58-40, when the question was whom do you trust to handle terrorism...
...Its adherents, prominent on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the New York Review of Books, argued that the outcome was the result of a number of unique factors—outlined below—that would not require any serious re-examination of their positions in the future...
...that big government is more of a threat to the country than big business or big labor...
...The particular attributes of the candidates, the qualities of jthe campaigns, the debates, and the public's satisfaction with economic or other conditions in the country—among many other elements—are never exactly the same from election to election...
...Most students of politics agree that the election of 1896 was a realigning election...
...There is of course a rally-'roundthe-flag factor for Americans in wartime, and perhaps also a reluctance to change horses in midstream...
...For example, the New York Review of Books of January 13, 2005, carried a long analysis by Mark Danner to the effect that the voters of Florida had been frightened into voting for Bush...
...For the first time in anyone's memory, the Democrats had almost as much money as the Republicans to wage a presidential campaign, and if we include the so-called 527 groups—organizations that did not fall under the campaign finance laws recently passed by Congress and extensively used by anti-Bush forces—there was actually more money supporting the Kerry campaign than the Bush campaign...
...The Abu Ghraib scandal, spiking oil prices, the lack of flu vaccine, the failure to capture bin Laden, the contentious public hearings of the 9/11 Commission, statements by former government officials criticizing Bush's failure to protect the country against attack and opposing his confrontational foreign policy, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the daily loss of American lives in that conflict, the film Fahrenheit 9/11 and literally dozens of books bashing Bush, his lack of military service, and his policies—all of which received sustained attention from a news media clearly hostile to him—must have created a sense among some otherwise uncommitted voters that the Bush presidency was a failure and Bush himself was incompetent and possibly dishonest...
...In this campaign cycle, Bush raised almost $375 million and Kerry $346 million...
...In the 2004 exit poll, voters were asked whether they thought government should do more to solve people's problems...
...In 1994, for the first time in 40 years, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, and have managed to hold control for ten years...
...BY PETER J. WALLISON 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005 1 VERY PRESIDENTIAL outcome be explained h result of unique factors...
...However, Bush's ratings as a war leader did not reflect a great deal of this kind of support in the months before the election...
...It's impossible to tell what voters meant by the term...
...that if government has a role it is to equip people to take care of themselves and to take advantage of their opportunities...
...And the Republicans—having, since Reagan, established themselves as the conservative party—are the beneficiaries of this trend...
...After a 40-year experiment with regulation, high taxes, and big government programs, it seems, Americans are resuming their traditional outlook...
...If this analysis is valid, the Republicans have reached their zenith, since the New Deal generation is no longer a factor in contemporary elections...
...and in the 2000s so far it is five points...
...This would not be a particularly persuasive argument if made to Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson—neither of whom was actually defeated during wartime, but had become so unpopular during their respective wars (Korea and Vietnam) that running again would have been a vain act...
...The same things were said about Al Gore in 2000, when he also lost an election many Democrats thought he should have won easily...
...There were $63 million in independent expenditures for Kerry, and $73 million in independent expenditures against Bush (George Soros alone is said to have spent $27 million to defeat Bush), while there were only $17 million in independent expenditures for Bush and $11.5 million spent independently against Kerry...
...politics had already occurred, and that the Republicans had become the dominant political party in the United States...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005 PETER J. WALLISON The ability to handle terrorism was the one issue on which Bush had a very substantial lead over Kerry in the polls throughout the campaign...
...However, if fear of terrorism were truly motivating voters, it would have been the top issue, and those most concerned about terrorism would have shown a pronounced preference for Bush...
...Many commentators and Democratic strategists, however, saw the election differently...
...The underlying trends, then, can be difficult to discern...
...The last realigning election was the 22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 2005 election of 1936, in the midst of the worst depression ever experienced in the U.S., when Roosevelt won 61 percent of the vote and the Democrats swept the field in a huge landslide...
...For this reason, in much of the commentary after the election, Bush's victory was attributed to Americans' fear of terrorism after 9/11...
...That's why realignments of the parties can only be identified in retrospect, when the major trends—those with staying power from election to election—become clear...
...Kerry's reputation as a war hero and his senator's grasp of national issues must have been impressive to undecided voters...
...Respondents were asked whether they favored smaller government with fewer services or larger government with many services...
...in the '90s, it was seven points...
...The Gallup poll in October 2004 found the country evenly divided on whether the president had a "clear plan" for "handling the situation in Iraq," and other polls found large majorities believing that Bush did not have a plan for rebuilding Iraq or bringing the situation there to a successful conclusion...
...These numbers do not reflect a decisive role for religion in the outcome, or a dominant view among voters that religious values were threatened by the Democrats or John Kerry...
...that government controls too much, does too much, and is wasteful and inefficient...
...Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage passed in every state in which they were on the ballot, and by wide margins, but the presence of these initiatives did not seem to determine the outcome in individual states...
...None of this, of course, should be taken to suggest that the Republicans now have a lock on power for the foreseeable future...
...The 2004 election appears to be one of those contests that was determined by long-term trends, and thus carries important lessons for strategists in both parties...
...He gained in vote percentage over the 2000 election in 45 of the 50 states (losing vote percentage only in tiny Vermont...
...They are either negative for Bush, or don't reflect any particular advantage...
...The argument in favor of this position would be that the dominant and traditional American political outlook—defined as conservatism in the American idiom—favors smaller or limited government (with an exception for military strength), individual responsibility, and government policies that enhance equality of opportunity rather than equality of result...
...A majority thought the fight against the insurgency there was going badly...
...When the independents were pressed to state a preference, it came out 48 percent Democrats and 45 percent Republicans...
...Republican appeals to religion manipulated voters into believing that religious values were at stake in the election...
...Although moderate Democrats, represented by such groups as the Democratic Leadership Council, saw in the election result the failure of their party to align itself with the views of the American people, the left did not...
...Both were battleground states, where each candidate was thought to have a chance to win important electoral votes...
...Many may have voted for Bush because of what's generally called the coarsening of public discourse in the United States, while others may have voted for Kerry because of Abu Ghraib and associated human rights issues...
...The Bush victories in 2000 and 2004, despite highly adverse circumstances in each case, seem to be additional evidence that a realignment of the parties has occurred...
...In the 1970s, the Democrats had an average lead over the Republicans of 21 points...
...If so, it would mean that a realignment of U.S...
...The Bush campaign frightened the American people into believing that the threat of terrorism would increase if Bush were defeated...
...In some cases, his margin was over 35 points...
...44 Peter J. Wallison is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Ronald Reagan: The Power of Conviction and the Success of His Presidency (Westview Books, 2003...
...The young adults of those years—which became a heavily Democratic cohort—have been gradually passing from the scene over the last 20 or 30 years...
...Significantly, this victory came after the controversy over gays in the military and the unveiling and ultimate defeat of the massive Clinton health care plan...
...In a book entitled What's Wrong, published by the American Enterprise Institute in 1998, Everett Carll Ladd, one of the pioneers of American polling, and my AEI colleague Karlyn Bowman, collected polling data over 25 or 30 years ending in the late 1990s...
...Both issues were bound to accelerate the trend toward the Republicans among those who support either limited government and/or traditional social values...
...A Harris poll in March 2005 showed the Democrats with a three-point lead...
...However, according to the exit polls, the top issues in 2004 were Moral Values and the Economy/Jobs...
...It suggests that by 2004 the electorate contained enough Republicans—and enough independents who lean or will vote Republican—to provide a winning margin...
...According to the polls published in What's Wrong, a large majority of Americans believe that people have an obligation to take care of themselves—that it's not the government's responsibility...
...There is evidence that, since Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980, a majority of the U.S...
...Candidates and campaigns can certainly make a difference in an election, and after the 2004 election some Democrats blamed the Kerry campaign and the candidate himself for the loss...
...But does it...
...This seems too easy an explanation...
...Finally, and perhaps most important, Bush campaigned almost exclusively in Republican areas and before handpicked Republican audiences...
...The "bold colors" that Reagan called for when he urged the Republican Party to state its positions clearly seem to have attracted more support than they've lost...
...IT MAY BE THAT THE RELATIVE CLOSENESS of Bush's victories in both cases obscured the fact that major changes—indeed, the long-awaited realignment—has occurred in the balance of the parties...
...Kerry also ran a creditable campaign, winning 16 percent more votes than Gore did in 2000...
...No president has ever won re-election with an approval rating under 50 percent, and Bush's rating on handling the economy—traditionally the most sensitive issue for an incumbent president—boded ill for his re-election...
...Although the economy had been growing since 2003, it looked as though Bush would be the first president since Herbert Hoover actually to have a net loss of jobs during his term in office...
...This survey shows a continuous trend toward the Republican Party...
...Yet McKinley won in 1896 with only 51 percent of the popular vote...
...This was certainly the prevailing view of government's role before the Great Depression and the New Deal...
...The Republicans were able to get constitutional amendments opposing gay marriage on the ballot in a large number of battleground states...
...If this is true, the exit polls didn't show it...
...Press commentators informed their readers that this meant the OCTOBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 19 A REPUBLICAN COUNTRY President was trying to shore up a fracturing base, while Kerry—who was ranging more widely to find his audiences—had secured his base and was reaching out to moderates...
...By November 2004 polls showed that the country was deeply divided about the war in Iraq, with around 50 percent saying the war had been a mistake...
...In the exit polls only 8 percent attributed their support for Bush to his religious faith, while others cited wholly secular reasons...
...Before the 2004 election, the pundits were asserting confidently that a presidential election is like a decision to extend the contract of an employee...
...The exit polls eventually showed that 89 percent of the Democrats voted for Kerry and 91 percent of Republicans voted for Bush...
...In an extensive poll by the Pew Research Center earlier this year, broad agreement on cultural issues was found among the several groups that made up what the Pew analysts characterized as the core groups of the Republican coalition...
...26 percent of the voters told the exit poll that they had been contacted by the Kerry campaign, while only 24 percent said they were contacted by the Bush campaign...
...In the five elections since 1994, the total Republican vote for the House of Representatives has been higher than the Democratic vote, except in the Clinton presidential year of 1996...
...The Republicans regained control in 2002 and increased their Senate margin in 2004...
...Perhaps more important in assessing the wartime leader effect is to look at the issues that Americans thought were important at the time...
...It installed the Republicans as the principal governing party in the United States until 1932—a string of presidencies interrupted only by Woodrow Wilson's victories in 1912 and 1916...
...This brought to the polls large numbers offimdamentalist Christians and evangelicals who voted for Bush and might otherwise have stayed home...
...Included in this core coalition were pro-government conservatives, who favored broad government action and regulation in domestic matters, but were strongly aligned with the Republican Party on cultural issues...
...According to the exit polls, Iraq (at 15 percent) ranked fourth in importance as an issue to those who voted, after Moral Values (22 percent), Economy/Jobs (20 percent), and Terrorism (19 percent...
...The fact that Bush could win without "reaching out" beyond his base is significant...
...To the extent that these polls show changes over time, they reflect growing skepticism about government...
...The Democrats—incensed about the ultimate resolution of the 2000 election—were completely united behind John Kerry, and the Republicans behind George W. Bush...
...was involved in an unpopular and controversial war, when job losses in an earlier recession had not been recovered, when the news on every front was relentlessly bad, when the Democrats were as united and energized as anyone has ever seen them—and had more money to spend than an incumbent Republican president—they still could not win...
...In one particularly striking result, polls taken by various media over the 20 years between 1976 and 1996 showed a complete reversal of view about the proper role of government...
...Some Democrats (in despair) and Republicans (with delight) interpreted this result as a commentary on Bush's "values" campaign, in which he never shied from affirming his belief in God (although not, in public, his Christianity, or his evangelical beliefs...
...In 1976, 40 PETER J. WALLISON percent favored a smaller government and 44 percent a larger government...
...pOLLING OVER AN EXTENDED PERIOD in the late 20th century tends to support the idea that there is a consistent and growing majority among American adults in favor of limited government and individual responsibility...
...Moreover, a majority in the exit polls said things were going either "somewhat badly" or "very badly" in Iraq...
...When it comes to addressing a particular problem at a particular time, Americans may be more likely to see government as a solution than they do when they think about government as an ideal...
...Under these circumstances, it seems unlikely that Americans voted Bush back into office because they admired his wartime leadership...
...If most voters disapprove of a president's performance, he will be turned out of office if his opponent can show a basic competence...
...Perhaps because of this, Bush's approval rating in the Gallup poll, which most election analysts take as the key measure of a president's electability, hovered around the mid-to-high 40s for all of 2004, and was 47 percent positive, 48 percent negative just before the election...
...The support that the Republican Party garners from those who endorse conservative views of government's role is enhanced by a substantial number of voters who may not have the same view of government but will back traditional cultural values...
...Much too much attention has been paid to the moral values matter...
...and that, on balance, the best government is the government that governs least...
...in the '80s this dropped to eleven points...
...It seems apparent that none of these factors—or all of them together—can explain Bush's win in 2004...
...Even if there is today a conservative majority in the electorate, this simply reflects Americans' views in the abstract...
...49 percent said no, and they voted for Bush, 70-29...
...It is true that Kerry never seemed to stir much emotional excitement in the Democratic base, but he didn't have to...
...Thus, the polarization of the electorate—much lamented by pundits and many in the media—has in this analysis been salutary for the Republican Party...
...Finally, the Kerry campaign kept pace with the Bush campaign in fundraising...
...After the election, a lot was made of the 22 percent of the voters in exit polls who cited "moral values" as the most important issue...
...The so-called battleground states—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, among others—were still losing jobs, and commentators were accusing Bush of encouraging companies to send these jobs abroad...
...His rating on handling the economy was slightly worse, 47 percent positive, 51 percent negative, and the Right track/ Wrong track question—asking whether the country was on the right track or the wrong track—was consistently negative, and sometimes substantially so, right up to the election...
...But if the trends are correctly identified, they can lead to winning strategies, so it is useful for both parties to consider whether a particular election—as a harbinger of future results was determined by the long-term trends or by the unique factors that are always present...
...Bush ran a better campaign than Kerry, and was a better candidate...
...Their decline as a group could account for the rise of the Republicans as a percentage of all voters...
...It was definitely not morning in America...
...OCTOBER 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 23...
...The fact remains, that in a year when the U.S...
...Bush was a wartime president and the American people never defeat the president in the middle of a war...
...Anti-gay marriage amendments passed handily in both states, but Bush carried Ohio and Kerry carried Oregon with a higher percentage of the vote than Bush got in Ohio...
...The fact that the Democratic Party seems both unwilling to accept any change in the big government programs of the New Deal or to compromise on what seems to be a radical secularist agenda, places it at a severe disadvantage in competing with the Republicans...
...The Republicans took control of the Senate in 1994, and held it until 2001, when a single defection switched control of the chamber to the Democrats...
...A serious recession, a major corruption scandal like Watergate, or a successful terrorist attack could result in an electoral revolt that strips the Republicans of their dominance temporarily...
...Ohio and Oregon are good examples...
...Althoughself-identified Republicans do not yet form a larger group than self-identified Democrats, they appear to have what might be called a working conservative majority of the electorate...
...Indeed, one of the major differences between Republicans and Democrats is the fundamental question of government's role...
...Before the 2004 presidential election, both Democrats and Republicans said the coming contest was one of the most important in their lifetimes...
Vol. 38 • October 2005 • No. 8
