There are two fundamental ways for Democrats to look at the 2004 presidential election. The first is to focus on the fact that if about 60,000 George W. Bush voters in Ohio had instead voted for John Kerry, the Democrat would be planning his administration today.
The second way to look at the results of Nov. 2 is more sobering, and probably more instructive in terms of how Democrats can come back in 2008. The questions are: What are the overall demographic and political trends, not just since 2000 but since the last time a Democrat won the White House, in 1996? And what are the trends in the battleground states that ultimately determined this election?
The big national number that everyone should understand is that Al Gore's margin of 540,000 popular votes in 2000 (which was undoubtedly reduced somewhat by Ralph Nader, who won 2.8 million votes) turned into a margin of 3.5 million popular votes for President Bush this year. (President Clinton won by more than 8 million votes in 1996.)
But it is not just the size of Bush's margin that matters. It is important to look at where Bush made his gains between 2000 and 2004. In the July 2004 Blueprint, I examined several national voter categories in which Gore lost substantial ground compared with Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. In most cases, that erosion has accelerated.
Clinton won women by 16 percentage points in 1996; Gore won them by 11 in 2000; Kerry won them by only 3 points in 2004. Clinton won high school graduates by 16 points; Gore lost them by 1; Kerry lost them by 5. Clinton won Catholics by 7; Gore won them by 3; and Kerry -- the first Catholic presidential nominee since 1960 -- lost them by 5.
Given current demographics, two especially important trends show that things are not getting better for Democratic presidential candidates: Clinton won seniors by 4 points, and Gore held that margin. But Kerry lost them by 8, even as seniors increased from 22 percent of the electorate to 24 percent. And among Hispanics, whom Democratic strategists have pursued obsessively during the past four years, there has been an even more precipitous decline. Clinton's 51-point margin in 1996 shrank to somewhere between a 27-point margin and a 33-point margin for Gore in 2000 (there are conflicting estimates), and then to an 11-point margin for Kerry in 2004.
The one bright sign for Kerry was among 18-to-29-year-old voters, whom he carried by 9 points. Gore carried them by only 2. But even there, Kerry did not come close to Clinton's 1996 margin of 19 points.
All of this happened in the context of a relatively high turnout election, which most Democrats thought would marginally benefit Kerry. Close to 120 million Americans voted on Nov. 2. That represents the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1992, and the second highest since 1960.
In this high-turnout election, Bush didn't just hang on to his 2000 vote; he boosted his margins in 41 of the 50 states, including blue-state bastions like New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Michigan.
Presidential elections are decided in the Electoral College, not by the popular vote, so the best way to get a sense of the post-2004 challenge for Democrats is to consider the shifting dynamics of key battleground states. In the May 2004 Blueprint, I analyzed three: Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. In this year's election, Kerry narrowly won Pennsylvania, narrowly lost Ohio, and lost Florida decisively. But what's remarkable is that Kerry hit his targets in all three, turning out the votes his campaign thought he would need to win. It wasn't enough in two states, and was barely enough in the third.
Keystone cliffhanger. Al Gore won Pennsylvania in 2000 primarily because he generated an enormous turnout in the Philadelphia area and in Pittsburgh. Since both cities have been losing population, I wondered in my previous analysis if it would be difficult for Kerry to match that performance. In the end, he exceeded it. Kerry garnered 214,000 more votes in urban and suburban counties than Gore did in 2000. But Bush turned in an even stronger performance in exurban and rural communities, improving on his 2000 showing in those areas by 225,000 votes.
Kerry maintained about the same margin as Gore in Pittsburgh's Allegheny County (95,000 votes), but boosted the already massive Democratic margin in Philadelphia from 348,000 to 398,000 votes. Even so, the Democratic statewide margin was cut nearly in half, from 207,000 votes to 128,000.
Republican gains actually occurred in two key areas. First, Democrats lost significant ground in northeast Pennsylvania, often the "swing" area of the state. Turnout in the key counties of Lackawanna and Luzerne was very high; yet Kerry's margin of victory was approximately 8,000 votes lower than Gore's in Lackawanna, and 6,000 lower in Luzerne.
But more crucially, reflecting a national pattern, rural and exurban counties in the state saw large increases in turnout and significant increases in the Republican percentage of that inflated vote. In just three exurban counties in south-central Pennsylvania -- Lancaster, York, and Westmoreland -- Bush improved his margin by 38,000 votes, basically offsetting the Democratic improvement in Philadelphia. Overall, in rural and exurban Pennsylvania, Bush picked up 106,000 net votes, compared with his 2000 performance. He won 90 percent of the state's counties. And there were danger signs even in the Democratic core areas. For example, the affluent "Main Line" suburb of Bucks County swung from Gore in 2000 to Bush in 2004.
Moving from geography to demographics, the number that leaps off the page in Pennsylvania -- a state with a relatively old population -- is Kerry's performance among seniors. In 2000, Gore did much better among Pennsylvania seniors, winning them by 17 percentage points, than he did among seniors nationally, whom he won by 4 points. Kerry lost them by 4 -- which was better than his national performance, but still a 21-point swing in the wrong direction.
In future elections, it is clear that Democrats will not be able to keep winning the state by piling up big margins in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and losing everywhere else. They must find a way to do better in northeast Pennsylvania, and to cut into the growing GOP margins in rural and exurban parts of the state.
Buckeye bust. The Kerry campaign's goals in Ohio were to turn out a large vote in the state's urban and suburban core areas, including some that have tilted Republican in the past, and to boost both turnout and the Democratic percentage in the northern Ohio communities hit hardest by job losses during the Bush administration. Kerry met both those goals impressively, after campaigning there relentlessly down the stretch, but still lost the state by about 119,000 votes. Al Gore, who did not seriously contest Ohio in 2000, lost the state by a margin of 164,000 votes.
Consider the two big urban counties that Democrats have frequently lost in the past, Hamilton and Franklin. Al Gore lost Hamilton County (which includes Cincinnati) by 43,000 votes; Kerry cut Bush's margin of victory to 25,000 votes there. Gore won Franklin County (which includes Columbus) by 4,000 votes; Kerry won it by 41,000 votes. In the state's big Democratic wheelhouse, Cuyahoga County (which includes Cleveland), Gore won by 168,000 votes; Kerry boosted that margin to 218,000 votes. Those are big numbers.
In the blue-collar counties that have suffered the greatest job losses, the picture was much the same. In Lucas County (Toledo), Stark County (Canton), Summit County (Akron), Mahoning County (Youngstown) and Lorain County, Kerry gained a net 32,000 votes over Gore's performance.
If you looked only at these urban and suburban gains, you'd be justified in assuming that Kerry would win Ohio and the presidency. But Bush, who won the exurban and rural Ohio counties by 422,000 votes in 2000, boosted his margin there to 515,000 votes in 2004. Those gains offset most of Kerry's gains, and proved decisive for the GOP.
Demographically, a few numbers stand out in Ohio. Self-identified Republicans represented 40 percent of the state's electorate, a 5-point margin over Democrats. Bush won Ohio Catholics by 11 points, compared with 5 points nationally. And the gender gap in Ohio nearly disappeared. One especially odd number is that Bush won 16 percent of African-Americans in the state (compared with 11 percent nationally), and there's a significant amount of indirect evidence that he did a lot better than that among rural black voters -- perhaps a reflection of the impact of cultural issues.
Sunshine sea change. While the results in Pennsylvania and Ohio reflected relatively marginal changes from four years ago, the state that redefined the idea of an electoral draw in 2000 -- Florida -- showed a big and unmistakable shift in the GOP's direction in 2004.
As in other states, the Kerry campaign hit some of its markers in the Sunshine State. Kerry slightly improved on Gore's already solid performance among Florida Hispanics (probably because Bush could not match his astronomical, Elian Gonzalez-related margins among Cuban-Americans in 2000). And turnout in key Democratic parts of the state -- such as Palm Beach and Broward Counties -- matched, or nearly matched, the historic turnout in 2000.
But the pattern of increased turnout, and increased Republican percentages, in rural and exurban communities that was evident in Pennsylvania and Ohio was even more intense in Florida, producing most of Bush's 5-point statewide margin. In just five mainly exurban counties (Brevard, Polk, Hillsborough, Lake, and Pasco), Bush picked up a net 99,000 votes over his 2000 performance. The blowout was a combination of higher turnout, especially among Republicans. Despite his success in urban areas, Kerry's support dropped to 39 percent of the vote in Florida's exurban communities, compared with Gore's 43 percent; and Kerry lost nearly 5 percentage points from Gore's performance in rural Florida. (Kerry won 37.9 percent of the rural vote, as opposed to the 42.7 percent that Gore won.) No turnout operation could possibly overcome these margins of defeat, especially given the fast-growing nature of the state's exurbs.
In the end, Democratic turnout grew by a total of 471,000 votes. But Republican turnout increased by 873,000 votes, fueled by an enormous 456,000-vote increase in rural and exurban counties.
Stopping the erosion. The bottom line in these three battleground states, and nationally, is pretty clear: Democrats are unlikely to win presidential elections based on sheer turnout efforts, or by boosting their already extraordinary margins in Democratic base areas. Republicans have now caught up in the get-out-the-vote game, and they are unlikely to allow Democrats the kind of advantage they had in the past.
Moreover, the results of the 2004 election confirm the advantage the GOP has gained in highly polarized elections. Democrats no longer enjoy superior partisan identification numbers in the general electorate. More importantly, 34 percent of voters in 2004 identified themselves as conservatives, 21 percent as liberals, and 45 percent as moderates. Even though Kerry won moderates by 11 percentage points, it wasn't enough to overcome the fact that conservatives outnumber liberals 3-to-2. He probably needed to boost his margin among moderates by at least another 5 points, in addition to picking off a slightly higher percentage of conservatives.
In the future, Democrats are going to have to rely on persuasion, as well as mobilization, and cut into those growing GOP margins among rural and exurban voters. It should be obvious by now that conceding "red America" is suicidal for Democrats, if they ever hope to win back control of Congress or a majority of the statehouses. But making inroads in red areas -- in states Bush carried in both 2000 and 2004, in battleground states, and even in increasingly vulnerable blue states -- is becoming equally essential in presidential contests.
The DLC's "heartland strategy" for expanding the electoral battlefield, and its agenda for closing "trust gaps" related to security, culture, and reform of government, are good places for Democrats to start in stopping the erosion of their vote.
Blueprint Keywords: Extra Strategy Extra Battlefield
