Why Bush Won

Stanely Greenberg and James Carville at Democracy Corps have a very interesting analysis of the final week of the campaign and the outcome over at Strategic Analyses and National Surveys. Most interestingly, unlike all of the pundits and bloggers who are giving us tome upon tome of election debrief and analysis without a shred of evidence to support it, (myself included:-) they have some data to back up what they are saying. You can read their analysis here and I highly recommend it.

Among their most interesting conclusions, however, is the claim that Kerry lost even though he won a majority of the new registrants and most of the undecided independents who broke towards him at the end as predicted. Why? They argue because a large percentage of "downscale voters" decided to vote on the basis of values because they felt that Kerry had not given them a strong enough set of economic reasons for vote for him and they broke towards Bush. They broke almost 6-4 for Bush in the final week.They write, "...for the Bush waverers (people who chose Bush but wavered to Kerry), who were the key swing group in the election, moral values is as important as terrorism and national security, and critically, are followed by concerns with the economy and jobs which are also quite important. No issue, however, matches “moral values” as a determinant of vote."

Hmmmm....

Who was it who said "Hope beats values every time unless you don't give people hope?" Kudos Dan Carol.