That's interesting, since the Secretary of State last night was adament that no provisional votes would be counted for 10 days because of state law.

Nevertheless, I think the battle was over about 1:30AM Eastern last night. Kerry would gain a lot more by being a statesman now.

More on this. Check the headlines at the major news sites:

CNN: Bush camp certain of win. (254-252 being reported as their count.)
ABC: Republicans certain. Dems defiant. (254-242)
MSNBC: "We are convinced." (269-238)
FOX: Bush camp claims victory. (269-242)
CBS: Bush camp confident amid count. (254-242)

I think your first two lessons are right on the money, but I'm not sure that the Iraq war the most surprising factor. Rather, another lesson of this election seems to have been the unexpected (at least for me) prominence of "morality" in choosing a candidate. In many states that was the 2nd or 3rd ranked item of importance for voters, and those folks voted heavily for Bush. I'm stunned by this, as just 8 short years ago people were voting for Clinton despite his questionable morality, ostensibly because they thought being able to do the job was more important than being a morally upright person. This seems to reflect an epic sea-change, if accurate.

In other words, it appears that the Bush-Cheney campaign's efforts to get out the religious vote worked beautifully (for them). And it didn't hurt that 11 states were voting on gay marriage bans, either. In that sense, I wonder if the effort to push gay marriages may have ultimiately worked against the broader interests of the gay constituency by provoking so many social conservatives to the polls.

Maybe not so much personally, but definitely for his party. I agree with Jim that he's going to run the risk of getting himself and the party getting labeled as whiners.

While typing this post, I just heard on the news that there are those within the Kerry camp saying that it is "hopeless" and that he should concede.

I was going to post something almost exactly like this. I think this is definitely true and was something that should have been predicted but seemingly wasn't. I think the gay marriage ban issue was really big for Bush despite the fact that his position is exactly the same as Kerry's. Bush, though, emphasized it enough so that people felt like he was the more "moral" of the two, and I think he reaped the benefit of that.

While I agree with teh general sentiment that Kerry's campaign made many mistakes, I'd give him a pass on this one. It was a no-win for Kerry on this issue. He couldn't afford to emphasize it as much as Bush did, for fear of pushing some in his camp away from voting at all, or to Nader. Bush had far less to lose by emphasizing his position on the issue than did Kerry.

Cool. :)

I agree. I think these new, silent morality voters offset the young, vocal voters that were seen as vital to the Kerry campaign.

I'm not necessarily saying that Kerry made a mistake on this at all. In fact, if anything I think Bush could have used it even more to his advantage, but as you said, it's a no-win issue. If you take one side, you're immoral to the right, but if you take the other, you're intolerant to the middle and left.

The only point that I was making is that I think this was tremendously overlooked as an influence in getting conservative voters to the polls in key states like Ohio, and seriously helped Bush win. It's not a strategy necessarily; it was just inevitable. I thought that before the election and was surprised it wasn't mentioned very much.

I think he backed off this once everyone realized that waiting 11 days would be of no benefit to anyone. But you're right, that was the public prouncement last night.

To tell you the truth, I'm not convinced that it wasn't a strategy from the beginning.

It may have been, but honestly I think that the Bush campaign became scared of it in the end. They thought that it would make them sound devisive and tilt the independent vote to Kerry, but I don't think they accurately anticipated the amount of voters it would bring in. If they had, they may have played it up even more, especially at the end.

The Gay marriage votes on the Ballot had to cause a lot of the turnout. While they were there, a lot just voted for bush as well.

Boortz is saying that it is an Ohio law that they can't count the provisional ballots for 11 days.

On this issue:


"In Ohio, Kerry won among young adults, but lost in every other age group. One-fourth of Ohio voters identified themselves as born-again Christians and they backed Bush by a 3-to-1 margin.

A sideline issue in the national presidential campaign, gay civil unions may have been a sleeper that hurt Kerry - who strongly supports that right - in Ohio and elsewhere. Ohioans expanded their law banning gay marriage, already considered the toughest in the country, with an even broader constitutional amendment against civil unions."

I have no idea. I think that's the first time I've tried to watch Rather during that time frame. I think the only time I watch these national news guys is during big elections ;-)

I think they have up to 11 days to qualify each ballot and make sure they are legit votes. In order to do that, you have to match the address and name and then verify the person did indeed vote in the presidential election.

So, while the official count won't be certified for 11 days, they were saying they would know the results of 50,000 ballots by lunchtime. That's where the 20,000 came from that I quoted earlier. My guess is the fact that Kerry had only gotten 7,000 out of the first 20,000 counted made it almost numerically impossible for him to win Ohio and that's why he conceded.

But, they are going through the provisional ballots in Ohio right know to verify the validity of the ballots. And, by doing so, they can see what each ballot has for the presidential election.

I think the whole numbers game played out like this:

Bush is up by around 136K in Ohio

77 of 88 counties reported around 136K provisional ballots. The remaining 11 counties counted for 10.5% of provisional ballots in 2000.

That means that there are probably 150K provisional ballots this time.

In 2000, there were 120K provisionals, 100K of which were found to be valid. That leaves 1/6 as invalid. Applying that to 150K, that means roughly 25K provisionals would be found to be invalid. That leaves 125K provisionals in a race where Kerry is losing by 136K. Throw in military overseas ballots, which you would think would run for Bush, or at worst split, and Kerry has no mathematical chance of winning.

Kerry called it.

I'm not even going to start on Georgia.

It really baffles me how crazy people get about gay marriage, I think pop culture and television have really scared people into thinking that gays and lesbians are taking over the country or something, so people feel its neccecary to protect themselves against a minority.

The GOP will lose seats if they become too conservative, because those reforms will backfire on them. I'm sorry to say its true, but very liberal ideas and reforms don't work and very conservative ideas and reforms don't work. Its just common sense that we need moderation in this country.

Baffled I can live with. There's countless things that leave me shaking my head in amazement on a pretty regular basis.

But I don't think it can be emphasized enough that this was far far far from being "a Georgia thing" or "a Mississippi thing" (I believe those are the 2 states with the largest margins of victory for their proposals). Similar measures passed in a couple of states that went for Kerry, and a much stronger measure in "too-close-to-call" Ohio. Across the board victory for the measures. Hell, to look at the numbers, it seems unlikely to believe you could get 11 states that split their Presidential votes to agree on a referendum to hand out free money or free beer. And yet this particular subject comes back unanimous.

I guess what I'm getting at is this -- in spite of the countless amount of media time spent ridiculously claiming otherwise, opposing recognition of
gay marriage IS the mainstream/center position in this country.

I agree, but I think the republican party is creating a pretty big net for social policies. There are many Pro-Choice, but against partial birth abortion republicans. There are some that are indifferent to gay-marriage, while others oppose it. There is also room for those that support civil unions. Some republicans think we have to be careful on religion in schools, while others don't have a problem with "under God" in the pledge or even after-school religious clubs. There are some that support federal funding for stem-cell research, while others oppose it. Some are pro-affirmative action, while others don't like the process.

I think a wide majority of people find themselves more at home with republicans from a social policy standpoint. Just look at their convention, you had Arnold, Rudy, McCain, Bush and Zell Miller. You have pretty much the wide range discussed above on social issues. When was the last time a Pro-Life or Anti-Affirmative Action or Anti-Gay Marriage or very religious person was embraced by the democratic party? Yet much of the US falls in the above categories.

Barack Obama, Arles?

Slight change of topic from across the Atlantic - looking at the queues and hearing of people waiting hours to vote, I was wondering how many voters each polling station would be expected to cover.

Which is why he might be the start of a new Democratic revolution. BUT, he is going to have to do more than make good speeches to do it.

I originally said:


Obama is pro-Choice, pro affirmative action, does not oppose gay marriage and favors increasing gun laws. While he's certainly an impressive candidate, he doesn't really fit what I was describing above.

Obama is a suspect candidate. He has a few skeletons in his closet that aren't widely known, but they make it hard for him to run for president. Still, he may be the Dems best hope.

H doesn't have to be President to start a revolution. Ask Newt Gingrich. If he can start forming a new coalition in Washington, he could be a big time player for many years to come.

True enough - I was just remarking on his presidential prospects.

Yeah, he was a cokehead when he was in school, was an alcoholic, dodged Vietnam, and ran a couple businesses into the ground.. oh, wait..

People make way too much of the skeletons in the closet. A good campaign strategist just makes them go away. Clinton waltzed past his skeletons and Bush buried his.

So anyway.. whats the dish on Obama?

I made my predictions a month or so ago. I said that Bush would win and gave the reason why I felt that. One of those reasons was the war. I still firmly believe the silent majority supported the war and always have. I'm not talking about the people who believe Hussein was connected to Al Queda either. I'm talking about rational people who felt this was the best course of action to take.

If I'd made a prediction on the morning of the election, I would have guessed Bush would win the popular vote, but Kerry would eek out the electoral vote with an Ohio win.

I didn't trust the first exit polls (or any exit polls after that). I wanted to see the raw data. As the numbers started rolling in, it became pretty clear Bush was doing better than people thought he would. I thought the unemployed in Ohio would swing the election. . . but even they seemed to support Bush in the end.

I never, ever, understood the people who had Kerry winning 300+ electoral votes. I was prepared to eat my words sinse so many people were saying it, but it just didn't seem possible to me.

The people who had Kerry winning 300+ definately shut me up. I thought for sure I was way off thinking Bush stood a chance with some of the intellectual elite whooping up a Kerry victory. Jeez, I'm the one that's been screaming that we should not believe everything we see on TV, and then I fall for the same crap.

I just studied that county red/blue map and saw something interesting. Take a look at the number of red counties in Pennsylvania. I think Thomas Jefferson gave us a warning about this a long time ago.

Pennslvania ended up being closer than Ohio (120,000 vote diff). And, when you consider there are still a large number of military ballots coming in because of the Rendell extention, Bush might end up being 30,000-40,000 votes from a large electoral route. Wisconsin and New Hampshire were also within 1%.

In Bush's column, only New Mexico and Iowa had margins of victory less than 2%, and he would have won the presidency without either. The left is in danger of losing big states in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota and even Michigan to the same heartland phenomina people have been talking about. On the right, the only big state within 3% was Ohio. Even Florida had a comfortable 5 point margin.

Again, to be clear, my above comments refer primarily to social policy, not necessarily economic policy. But if the left keeps turning more and more secular, they are in a position to lose states like Wisconsin, Penn, Minnesota and Michigan.

The point is they're not secular, but the Republicans are doing a good job of making people believe it is so. Kerry goes to church every week... how is that secular?

It's secular because their party will never dream of promoting someone that believes partial birth abortion should be outlawed (even though 70% of Americans think so), someone who is open about their faith impacting their policy, someone who wants the words "Under God" in the pledge, someone who doesn't have a problem with after-school religious clubs, someone who does not support affirmative action, someone who is pro-gun rights and someone who does not feel the courts should be imposing gay marriage on communities that do not agree with it. And, most importantly, someone with a consistent record on the above and willing to take stands on these issues in a public setting.

Right now, a majority of the US believes in everything stated above, yet you can't find one democrat that is fronted by the party that even takes a stance on just half of the above. The republican convention had Arnold and Rudy that don't toe the party line on abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues. They had McCain speak who doesn't toe the line on certain economic and social issues as well. Where was the pro-life speaker in the DNC convention? The anti-affirmative guy? The pro-gun guy? The pro death penalty speaker? These are all stances that a majority of Americans have, yet no one in the DNC leadership has. The democrats need more of John Breaux and Evan Byah and less of Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. Yet, I don't think we will see Breaux or Byah ever speaking at a DNC convention like we did with Arnold and Rudy on the right.