A longer version of the analysis I first posted in The Locker Room can now be found over at Reason Online. (By the way, I didn’t write the subhead.)

And at Slate, a poli sci professor delves even deeper into the 2000 and 2004 exit-poll numbers and comes up with a similar conclusion: it was terrorism, not moral values, that likely was the clincher for the Bush re-election in key states. Of course, the GOP needed both sets of issues — and others — to build its majority coalition. Terrorism may have won Bush the swing voters he needed to up his percentage, but his stands on moral issues helped bring his base to the polls.