OK, now I am really getting steamed. After blissfully staying away from the national TV punditry for a while ? too busy ? I scanned the channels this morning and saw everyone parroting some version of a single explanation for the Bush win: it was all about same-sex marriage.
Obviously, it was partly about same-sex marriage, and about moral and cultural issues more generally. But political parties are coalitions. Individuals and groups within the coalition bring different things to the table, including different priorities and views. Without a broad coalition, a political party is not competitive.
Based on the exit polls, it is just as legitimate to say that Bush?s edge on taxes was the difference in the popular vote ? if you multiply the share of voters citing taxes as the number-one issue by the preference for the Republican, you get about 3 percent. It is also just as legitimate to say that education and health care were the winning issues for Bush, since if you work the math out the Bush voters picking these two issues as top priorities add up to about 3 percent.
So it was No Child Left Behind and Health Savings Accounts that won the election for Bush!
Another bias in the exit-poll data is that the issues of terrorism and the war in Iraq are reported as separate priorities for voters. Well, that?s what many Democrats and the media believe, but most voters (55 percent) said that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terrorism, so for them the two categories aren?t separate. If you add the two together, the issue of national security was by far the most important in the 2004 race ? the choice of one-third of the electorate ? and Bush won a clear, though not overwhelming, majority there.
It turns out that you need every slice of a pie to make it round. It doesn?t matter how wide or narrow the slice is.
