> Reconfiguring the Exit Polls: the 2.04 Americas
> Two coalitions faced off in the elections last week,
> and although we still
> don’t know which coalition won, it is possible to
> see what the two coalitions
> are.
>
> The way VNS Exit polls are published, one can see
> quickly that, for
> instance, 48% of the voters were men, and that 42%
> of men went for Gore and
> 52% for Bush. But what percentage of Gore’s and
> Bush’s votes were men?
> The columns of the poll aren’t printed that way, but
> with a simple calculator
> it is possible to figure out that 58% of Gore’s
> voters were women, and that
> 53% of Bush’s voters were men (as were 58% of Ralph
> Nader’s voters).
>
> This enables one to see the sharp differences in the
> 2.04 Americas that were
> represented in this election -- by the roughly 49
> million each who voted for
> Bush and Gore, and the 2 1/2 million that voted for
> Nader.
>
> George Bush’s best seven states (60% or better) were
> Utah, Idaho, Wyoming,
> North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.
> His support was concentra
> ted in states with more acres than people, in places
> where people are pretty
> much alike racially and culturally, and where the
> Federal government is seen
> as an outside and unnecessary intruder, enforcing
> gun controls, environmental
> restrictions, and the like on an unwilling people.
> The capital of George
> Bush’s America might be considered to be Salt Lake
> City, with a secondary
> center in Columbia, South Carolina. His vote was
> heavily Southern (35%) and
> weak in the Northeast (19%). 35% of his vote came
> from rural areas, 44% from
> the suburbs, and only 21% from urban America.
>
> George Bush’s America is white (90%), indeed white
> Protestant (59%) with
> another 22 % white Catholic. It contains few Jews
> (2%), and few Blacks (2%),
> and only 5% is Hispanic, despite Bush’s efforts to
> reach that group. It is
> made up of married people (72%) and gun-owning
> families (59%). 52% of its
> members attend church at least weekly (and 24% are
> self-defined members of
> the religious right). Few of its members are gay
> (2%) and few from union
> families (20%). Ideologically, it is 49%
> conservative, 46% moderate, and 5%
> liberal. 61% think that abortion should be always
> or mostly illegal. Only
> 54% of these voters thought issues were more
> important than qualities. The
> issues they cared most about were taxes (23%),
> education and world affairs
> (14% each).
>
> There are substantial minorities on some issues in
> this group. Only 25% of
> the group favors school vouchers.. Even in this
> group 43% supported stricter
> gun control laws, and 24% approved of Bill
> Clinton’s performance in office.
> 51% think the country is proceeding on the right
> track, although 77% of them
> think the country is on the wrong moral track. 64%
> think the country needs a
> fresh start.
>
> Al Gore’s America is only 69% white and only 32%
> white Protestant, 19% Black,
> 9% Hispanic, 6% Jewish, 32% from union families, and
> 6% gay. Only 36% are
> from gun-owning households, and only 59% are
> married, and it is more
> moderate (55%) than liberal (34%), with 11%
> conservative.
>
> 51% of its members seldom or never attend church .
> 77% think that abortion
> should be always or mostly legal. Al Gore’s voters
> are to be found in the
> great urban areas with a sharply polarized
> economic, racial and social
> structure, where government is a necessity to
> organize life, neo-social
> democratic America. If Bush’s America is hundreds
> of people in thousands of
> acres, Gore’s is thousands or hundreds of thousands
> of people in hundreds of
> acres. 74% of these voters voted on issues not
> qualities. The issues they
> cared about most were the economy (22%). social
> security and education (17%
> each). 82% favor stricter gun laws, and 93%
> approved Clinton’s performance.
> 86% think the country is on the right track, and
> 59% think the country is on
> the right moral track. 79% think the US should stay
> on course.
>
> Al Gore’s best 7 states were Massachusetts, Rhode
> Island, Connecticut, New
> York, New Jersey, Maryland, Hawaii (and the District
> of Columbia). The
> capital of Al Gore’s America could be anywhere in
> the great Megalopolis or
> Metroplex of BosWash -- it might as well be New York
> City, and it is obvious
> that the secondary capital would be somewhere on the
> narrow coastal plain of
> the West Coast -- Los Angeles or San Francisco.
> More than 20% of his vote
> came from each of the 4 sections of the country,
> thus over-representing the
> Northeast, and under-representing the South. 37% of
> his vote came from urban
> areas, 42% from suburbs, and only 21% from rural
> areas.
>
> Ralph Nader's relatively tiny America was 58% male
> , 88% white , 33% under
> 29 (as compared to 17% of all voters), 52% unmarried
> (as against 35% of all
> voters) , and 39% (as compared to 15% of all
> voters) practiced
> non-Judeo-Christian religions or none at all. 73%
> voted on issues rather
> than qualities. His best states included 4 of the
> 6 New England states, as
> well as Montana, Hawaii, and Alaska. 71% favor
> stricter gun control. 64%
> approved of Clinton’s performance. The capital of
> Nader’s America would be a
> small selective college in a rural state, perhaps
> Reed College in Oregon, or
> Bennington in Vermont. His vote was heavily
> concentrated in the Northeast
> (29%) and West (36%). 53% of his vote came from
> the suburbs, with the rest
> equally urban and rural.
>
> The most interesting thing about these divisions is
> that they came not from
> the candidates, but almost in spite of them. Gore
> and Bush talked about as
> little about guns and abortion as they could get
> away with; they took largely
> indistinguishable stances on such questions as
> morals, family life, and the
> morality of the entertainment industry; they both
> did their best to avoid
> the racially polarizing debates of past years; and
> one could barely find an
> example of either man talking about rural or urban
> issues. Of course various
> interest groups such as the N.R.A., the AFL-CIO,
> NARAL, the Christian
> Coalition, and the NAACP ran polarizing ads and
> campaigns. but most of them
> were below the radar.
>
> Indeed, both candidates spent all their time talking
> to suburban moderates,
> who ended the campaign by yawning and delivering a
> divided and diminished
> vote, while the urban homelands of the Democrats and
> the rural homelands of
> the Republicans turned out at extremely high levels
> despite the limp appeals
> being made to them by their putative spokesmen.
>
> It was this high level of difference which so
> ruthlessly squeezed the
> third-party candidates, and which makes simple
> invocations of “bring us
> together” seem so empty. If either side is to
> appeal to the homelands of
> the other, or even to get strong suburban support,
> it would take something
> more than the visual show of color at the
> Philadelphia Republican
> convention, or Al Gore saying that he is in favor of
> “smaller government.”
>
>
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