Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Some Final Thoughts

Baton Rouge

After finally getting to bed I woke up to find John Kerry had called George Bush to concede the election, now the speeches are all that's left. Quite right too, an avalanche of futile lawsuits in Ohio would have done nobody any good.

You might wonder why a President can win a state like Ohio when tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs have been lost there over the last four years, a budget surplus has been turned into a huge deficit and there's an ever-more unpopular war continuing in Iraq. And this is what people in the rest of the world will have most trouble understanding. Most people who backed Bush didn't vote on the basis of the economy and jobs, or even on security and Iraq. Most people voted for him because of his stance on the so-called moral issues, like gay marriage. Gods, gays and guns, if you will. For John Kerry, being a decorated Vietnam veteran, experienced politician and more skilled debater wasn't enough. Too many people in the South and Midwest just didn't trust him on those 'hot button' issues. Presuming Bush carries New Mexico, it's possible for Kerry to leave Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and fly all the way to San Diego without crossing a single state he's won. And that's why he lost.

The media were far too cautious last night. None of them wanted to declare Bush the victor, even when it had long since become obvious he was going to win. The two networks who called Ohio in his favour last night both refused to put Nevada in his column too, because that would have won Bush the election. As this was going on, the three who didn't call Ohio were quite happy to give Nevada to Bush, as long as they weren't the first to give him the whole election. White House staffers were apparently not best pleased at this, as in the absence of a concession from Kerry they were waiting for the media to declare Bush the winner so the President could go and make his victory speech. The media were waiting for Bush to give a speech so they could declare him the winner. As a result it all fizzled out last night, but I suppose the result isn't any different in the end.

The main problem for the media to address now is the reliability of exit polling. The secret data yesterday all pointed to a Kerry victory in Ohio, Florida and overall, and yet he ended up several million votes behind Bush and losing in both those states. Whether exit polls can ever be a credible tool in future elections is now highly debatable.

What's not debatable is that the people have spoken and Bush is still the President. Four more years.

1 Comments:

At 3 November 2004 at 21:06, Anonymous Anonymous said...

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Umm...I think you mean the ACCURACY of the (exit) polls.

Also YouGov, (and the sainted Peter Kellner), were wrong by 5%-6% points (swing; they predicted a Kerry win by +3%).

I'm sooooo glad........

Buda

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