The values vote, in the end, was polarized even in terms of partisan
understandings of what “moral values” meant. While Republicans understood and were
far more concerned about “moral values” understood generally compared to Democrats,
there were relatively more values-voting Democrats who understood “moral values”
specifically as a concern for the social policies of abortion, gay marriage, and stem-cell
research rather than generally as a concern for religion, candidates’ qualities, or
traditional values.
Values, Religion, and Character
If most values voters were not issue crusaders on abortion, gay marriage, and
stem-cell research, we are likely to tell a more plausible story about the role of “values”
in the 2004 elections if we zoom out of the view of “moral values” as specific to the
social policies of abortion, gay marriage, and stem-cell research into a more panoramic
view of “values.”
As Table 9 indicated, a good proportion (29.5%) of values voters saw “moral
values” as an indicator of candidate qualities, and another 13.7 percent equated values
with religion (and hence the candidate that would protect “values” as the candidate of
faith.) Taken together, more values voters (43.2%) understood “moral values” as a
general gauge of a candidate’s character than a specific concern for the social policies of
abortion, gay marriage, and stem-cell research (40%). This is significant, because 2004
was not an “open-seat” contest, as the 2000 presidential election was. Because there was
an incumbent seeking re-election, the race invariably turned on the public’s judgment on
President’s Bush: his performance in the last four years, as well as a general,
characterological assessment if this fellow was capable enough to deliver with “four more
19
Convention