CNN's analysis of the exit data showed that morality was cited as the number one concern by 22 per cent of voters -- four-fifths of whom voted for Bush. The second top issue was economy and jobs -- and Kerry captured four-fifths of those votes.
Twenty-two percent of the American voters said morality was the most important issue in the election, compared to 20 percent for economy and 19 percent for terrorism.
Morality was described to be the single biggest motivator driving American voters this time.
That's according to pollsters and political scientists, who attributed Tuesday's big voter turnout and President George W. Bush's victory to an electorate galvanized by moral values such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
The factor that may have tipped the election for President Bush is a core issue for many Americans: morality. Some say if Democrats had pushed their message of family values harder, the country could have seen a much different outcome. WAVE 3's Frances Kuo reports.
Why was morality a big issue in the election?
Why did it seem to be missed in pre-election polling data?
How did Bush get perceived as the more moral candidate?
Was morality an issue when you voted? (for US citizens)
If so, how did morality affect the way you voted?
otseng wrote:Why did [morality] seem to be missed in pre-election polling data?
Probably for the some of the same reasons that some major media veins (NY TImes, Washington Post, etc.) endorsed the invasion of Iraq and then later said "Whoops!": seemingly responsible, professional journalists dropped the ball and forgot to ask some valid questions. With all those advertising dollars that the major political parties shove into the coffers of the media, it's amazing that any good questions got asked.
otseng wrote:How did Bush get perceived as the more moral candidate?
This is an ecellent question, indeed. For the record, you can mark me down as one who definitely did not regard Bush as the more moral candidate. Preemptive military strikes against sovereign nations is pretty un-cool --and dare I say immoral-- as far as I'm concerned. Putting other people's sons and daughters in harms way without sufficient evidence and without a coherent exit strategy is ethically ugly, in my humble opinion.
otseng wrote:Was morality an issue when you voted? (for US citizens)
I attribute it to clever campaigning by the Bush camp, combined with the political activism of the anti-evolutionists. We did hear on NPR, after all, that the fundamentalist evangelical Christians in (was it Kansas?) worked really hard to get out the vote, as they had been asked to do--and they expect payback. I presume the situation was similar elsewhere.
Why did it seem to be missed in pre-election polling data?
The polls asked "who are you going to vote for?" They didn't ask "why are you going to vote for this guy?" In a country that was founded on religious freedom, the very concept of voting solely on the basis of religion seems anti-American. Remember, also, that the polls missed a great many other issues as well, some of which I consider much more important.
We must also remember that most of the media is run by a small number of people, who are wealthy, and who are not, shall we say, very "liberal." Remember what happened in 2000: a lot of nasty stories (later proven to be lies) were first reported in right-wing rags. The mainstream media picked up on these stories and reported them--as they would, being owned by the same people. Eventually, even the few liberal papers and radio stations had to discuss them. By the time we learned that the stories were made up, it was too late (for example, the Congressional hearings that discredited the story that the Clinton folks removed all of the W's from the white house computers, and generally vandalized the place). So, would we really expect the right-leaning media to give away a major secret advantage that their candidate had?
How did Bush get perceived as the more moral candidate?
This one's easy. He came out and said it. He talks endlessly of his Moral Clarity. The convention even said "a vote for Bush is a vote for God." I thought this issue was obvious. It was very clear that many, many people were much more worried about gays getting married than about the damage that Bush has done to their own lives. I can't understand it, except to imagine that most people make decisions based solely on emotion, and not on analysis of the facts.
The Bush campaign also made a concerted effort to paint Kerry as an idiot. Just before the election, there was a poll somewhere that showed Bush trailed "anyone but Bush" by a huge difference--yet Bush and Kerry were neck-and-neck. How can all of these people who wanted anyone but Bush have not seen that Kerry wasn't Bush? It's interesting, though, that many of the anti-Kerry statements of the Bush campaign were untrue--but not analyzed in the so-called "liberal press." It's odd that it's OK to lie if you're Right. [I know it's OK to lie to, or about, people outside of the religion, in Scientology, but I hadn't realized it was OK in fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity too.]
Was morality an issue when you voted? (for US citizens)
Yes. I consider Bush to be highly immoral.
If so, how did morality affect the way you voted?
Yes. I would have voted for a dead monkey before I'd vote for Bush. I guess the bright side of it is that, when Iraq falls apart completely into chaos, and we have to cancel all government programs because we can't pay for them, and the US credit rating on the world markets tanks because our deficit is impossibly huge, we will have an easy time assigning blame. These things would probably have happened whoever won the election, since they had been put on track so effectively, but at least this way, no one can say it's Kerry's fault.
I think that Jose and mrmufin have expressed my views very well. I would add that when Bush voters refer to "moral values", they are really only referring to abortion and gay marriage. It's like a code. For example, recent reports have estimated that civilian casualties in Iraq have topped 100,000. This is truly a staggering number, but evidently not a moral issue to Bush supporters.
There was an interesting moment in one of the debates, when Bush was asked about possible Supreme Court nominees. One of the things he mentioned in response was the Dred Scott decision from the 1850's, which had a lot of people scratching their heads. It turns out to be another coded reference to abortion, but one that probably only those on the Republican right would catch. At the time it seemed like a non-sequitur, but in retrospect I can understand the connection.
It seems to me that abortion has become the wedge issue. This is unfortunate to my point of view, because it hinders us as a nation from finding reasonable solutions that work toward a common goal - that goal being, to reduce (ideally eliminate) the incidence of abortions. My personal view is that it is simplistic in the extreme to imagine that making abortion illegal will actually solve that problem, but that's in another thread.
For the forseeable future, both Democrats and Republicans will only nominate candidates who toe the party line - pro-choice on the left, and pro-massive restrictions on the right. As long as that keeps happenening, we democrats will continue to get hammered every four years.
I find it interesting, and rather sadly ironic, that abortion rates dropped consistently through the Clinton years, and then rose again under Bush.
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
perfessor wrote:I find it interesting, and rather sadly ironic, that abortion rates dropped consistently through the Clinton years, and then rose again under Bush.
Why, do you suppose? Could it be related to Bush's removal of used-to-be-public information from the CDC website, so that it only promotes abstinance? Could it be a general decline in real education about sex, so that more people are getting pregnant by mistake, because they didn't know about condoms? This makes it seem as if Bush's idea that there's only one right morality, and it's his, actually makes things worse for many people. Clinton believed that knowledge was power, and that giving people knowledge makes the country stronger (and perhaps raises the level of morality as well). Now we've come to a time of hiding knowledge, because it's against the party line. As you say, it's sad.
Jose wrote:How did Bush get perceived as the more moral candidate?
This one's easy. He came out and said it. He talks endlessly of his Moral Clarity.
And few took him to task on his claims. He staked his claim as The Moral One and the other team(s) forgot to put forth loud and clear dispute to Dubya's positions on moral grounds. I think that if the Democratic (or any other) party really wants to win the next race, they need to get very, very vocal and not let the Republican party walk away with the Moral High Horse just because they claimed it. A worthy challenger will need to question the moral merit of Republican positions on things like stem cell research, abortion, preemptive military strikes, etc.
Jose wrote:It was very clear that many, many people were much more worried about gays getting married than about the damage that Bush has done to their own lives. I can't understand it, except to imagine that most people make decisions based solely on emotion, and not on analysis of the facts.
This is a very sad, but painfully accurate, assessment of how elections happen in the US of A.
Jose wrote:I would have voted for a dead monkey before I'd vote for Bush.
Ha! I think I know that feeling... It wasn't too many years ago that I couldn't fathom voting for a Democratic Presidential candidate. But this was also the first time that I seriously suspected that the US President was intellectually unfit for the position. To me, he just comes across as... well, dumb. Perhaps if he got better at conjugating verbs this assessment would change. I don't think that proper verb conjugation is too much to ask of a Yale grad, is it?
It wasn't too many years ago that I couldn't fathom voting for a Democratic Presidential candidate. But this was also the first time that I seriously suspected that the US President was intellectually unfit for the position. To me, he just comes across as... well, dumb
I can't see how you could possibly have come to that conclusion!
Well, as an observer from across the pond...
"I don't want nations feeling like that they can bully
ourselves and our allies. I want to have a ballistic defense
system so that we can make the world more peaceful, and at
the same time I want to reduce our own nuclear capacities to
the level commiserate with keeping the peace."
—Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 23, 2000
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take
dream."
—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000
"If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care,
we're going to have gag orders."
"Drug therapies are replacing a lot of medicines as we used to
know it."
"It's one thing about insurance, that's a Washington term."
"I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a
gun."
"Mr. Vice President, in all due respect, it is—I'm not sure 80
percent of the people get the death tax. I know this: 100 percent
will get it if I'm the president."
"Quotas are bad for America. It's not the way America is all
about."
-
"If affirmative action means what I just described, what I'm for,
then I'm for it."
—St. Louis, Mo., October 18, 2000
I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
—Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000
"I think we agree, the past is over."
— On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000
Hey, if that doesn't prove bush is more moral, I don't know what will.....
Seriously it all boils down to what people want to believe. When you go to church on sunday before the election and hear...... (I apologize in advance for the offensive tone of what I am about to write, but it adequately typifies their thinking)
"Kerry supports queers" or "Kerry Kills babies", "Bush is a good ole boy just like us", "don't forget to vote against those fags trying to get marriage bills passed"
Its a small wonder that the sheep followed their shepherd right into the bushler camp. Karl Rove and co had their cards all lined up. Xianity in general promotes a follow the herd mentality, and they came up smelling like roses on this one. To bad for people who actually would like to see the world become a better place.
Fear, foolishness, misinformation and intolerance won in november.
otseng wrote:In the Presidential election, morality was the top issue that was on the mind of voters.
Why was morality a big issue in the election?
I think that many people believe the world is moving too quickly; the amount of information available about the world and technology and new discoveries in science and everything else is overwhelming. It's more and more difficult to accept that so many things are out of our control. Over the last twenty years or so, our society has become specialized and fragmented into smaller and smaller bits, and different fields of study and work have their own different cultures. There are hundreds of these separate fields now, and unless you follow them on a regular basis -- in the news, blogs, participate in discussions, etc. -- then you are left out of progress in that field. I think a lot of people feel that many important innovations and happenings are passing them by, so they look for something to grab onto, something that they can understand and feel good about themselves.
There have always been deeply religious people who are constantly worried that morality and religion are slipping away from society. But recently, the large majority of Americans who have been ambivalent about religion or who thought of themselves as semi-religious have started to turn towards faith out of this fear of societal progress. In many people's minds religion=morality no matter how you look at it, and God=religion. I wouldn't be surprised if Bush, holding the Republican banner, mentioned the word "God" a hundred times more often than Kerry did. Basic advertising. All of a sudden, Bush becomes associated with God=religion=morality. And all of the fear that has built up over how civilization has progressed since the 1960s got translated into Republicans.
Why did it seem to be missed in pre-election polling data?
Because most of the media no longer does its job effectively. 90% of the American media are either mouthpieces for the administration or knee-jerk critics of it. No one even bothered to ask the question.
How did Bush get perceived as the more moral candidate?
Deceptive advertising.
Was morality an issue when you voted? (for US citizens)
Absolutely. Bush is a lying, manipulative, smirking, incoherent, stupefyingly mediocre fratboy who doesn't give a hoot in Heck about most of the decisions he purportedly makes and only relishes the power the office gives him. My opinion, of course.
If so, how did morality affect the way you voted? I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat.
- Will Rogers
