Where the dollars and the votes were in 2004
The Washington Times excerpts Michael Barone’s introduction to the new Almanac, and provides a couple of tidbits we did not know:
• Conventional wisdom held that Republicans would raise much more money than Democrats, but that, too, was disproved. The Kerry campaign, the DNC and the Democratic 527 organizations spent $344 million on ads during the campaign. That was more than $55 million above what the pro-Bush forces spent. George Soros and the other wealthy contributors who were so instrumental in funding the Democratic 527s underwrote a TV campaign that “seethed with Bush hatred.” According to post-election surveys, however, the TV assault turned out not to be very persuasive overall. While the anti-Bush ads did connect with the Bush haters, “[a]n enduring problem for the Democratic Party,” Mr. Barone observed, could be the fact that “George W. Bush will not be on the ballot again.”
• Mr. Kerry won a 6.5-million majority in the 100 largest counties. More than 6 million of that majority was achieved in the 48 largest counties that had lost population since 2000 or grew by less than 3 percent. Democrats may not be able to increase their turnout by much in slow-growth or population-losing counties. Outside the 100 largest counties, Mr. Kerry lost by nearly 10 million votes. In addition, Mr. Bush won majorities in 97 of the nation’s 100 fastest-growing counties, where he achieved a popular-vote margin of 1.8 million, which was more than half of his national vote margin. This 1.8-million margin, while not as large as the one Mr. Kerry achieved in the 100 largest counties, is nonetheless “likely to increase over time, and can easily be increased even more by the kind of organizational effort mounted by the Bush campaign in 2004,” Mr. Barone argues.
We refer you once again to one of our favorite maps, illustrating Barone’s point just above. The blue spikes graphically display the high concentration of Kerry votes in the urban areas that Barone is discussing. Think of it: Kerry got a 6 million vote margin from areas that are stagnating or shrinking. This means nothing good for the GOP, of course, if the Democratic Party can broaden its appeal to the exurbs. That appears to us a a key question in a key battleground. The urban vote seems pretty much topped out for the Democratic Party, since, in our estimation, the dead and their housepets were already voting twice in 2004.
August 22nd, 2005 at 9:07 am
“the dead and their housepets were already voting twice in 2004.”
Great line. Krugman hasn’t gotten the word.
Recall that G.W. won College grads, H.S. grads vs Kerry’s Advanced
Degrees (University profs) and drop-outs. In other words the
dependancy class and their enablers.
The real irony here is that Dem NAACP and the other 99% Dem “civil
rights” organizations are turning the Democratic party into a real target for
a backlash by those of us fed up with the excuses for the continued
dependency of their “constituants”. The more they press for
reparations the stronger the backlash will be against all the enablers.
Think we are seeing this already in box office for Hollywood. Most of
America is sick of all of it. Now that the Left has exposed themselves
by their anti-war memes with no care for the women of Iraq, the human
slaughter that was going on there, not even for the replenishing of the
marshes, home of the Marsh Arabs what remains for the Dems?
Gay marriage?