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Published on Friday, November 5, 2004 by FindLaw.com
Beyond the Polarized Electorate, And The Republicans' Superior Voter Turnout
by John W. Dean
A large number of Americans are very unhappy - indeed, many are extremely depressed - about the 2004 presidential election returns. Countless supporters of Senator John Kerry are literally scratching their heads, unable to fathom how seemingly rational people voted for President George W. Bush to serve a second term. Given our poor economy, and the disastrous Iraq war -- with its bogus justification and its thousands of American casualties - Kerry supporters find it hard to imagine, let alone understand, the case for casting a Bush vote.
Political pundits explain the election as the result of a deep division within America. They note that we are a culturally polarized nation, with the red states and the blue states providing a map of the divide. Pundits also explain the election as a result of voter turnout: Conservatives, they say, proved themselves superior at getting their voters to the polls on November 2nd.
These explanations are doubtless correct, to some extent. But they are also dreadfully incomplete. Books will be written deconstructing and biopsying this 2004 contest. Hopefully they will reach farther than these surface explanations to understand what occurred.
Pollster John Zogby appropriately dubbed this an "Armageddon Election" given the "closely-divided electorate with high partisan intensity on each side." But the word "Armageddon" suggests another explanation as well: I suspect religious overtones and undercurrents played a major role in the election.
Kerry Voters' Question: What In The World Were Bush Voters Thinking?
A few days before the election, I got some insight into the thinking of Bush voters, when I listened to a call-in by a liberal community college instructor, to a conservative radio show.
The caller explained that she was a periodic listener who thought the host was honest, though she seldom agreed with his beliefs. She recounted a conversation with two of her colleagues. She said they were intelligent, politically active Bush supporters.
The caller had told her friends that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, and that this had recently been confirmed in the report of President Bush's envoy Charles Duelfer. But her colleagues insisted there had indeed been WMD, and cited the same Duelfer report.
The caller had also told her friends that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq - and pointed out that Vice President Cheney had admitted as much in the Vice Presidential debate, and that the 9/11 Commission's report had so found. But her friends insisted there had indeed been such a relationship; that Cheney had misspoken, and she was wrong about the 9/11 Commission's report.
Where did her two colleagues get their factually erroneous information? The caller explained that they attended the same evangelical church, and got their information from a sermon their minister had given on the subject.
The talk show host conceded that the caller was correct on all of the points she'd raised. And then he made a comment to this effect: "This isn't the first time I have had callers raise this nonsense being spread from the pulpit. Now I am a Christian, but I am not an ignorant Christian. What in the world are they thinking spreading this erroneous junk information?"
Looking For Answers
What I had heard intrigued me. Were conservative religious leaders pushing junk information on their parishioners? I began listening to a wide cross-section of radio stations, to see what was being said.
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