marriage, culturally conservative persons, and the business community, especially small business
owners.
12
Turnout, normally an advantage for Democrats, would be the key to success for the
president.
13
Both parties exceeded their expectations about the number of partisans who voted. More
than 125 million Americans, or 64 percent, voted in 2004; this turnout was the highest since
1968 when the Vietnam war was the principal issue.
14
A demographic breakdown of the electoral
results shows that Bush out polled Kerry among voters who were male, white, married, Roman
Catholic, evangelical or born-again Christians, and over thirty years old.
15
As for the issues
which shaped voters’ choices, terrorism clearly played a decisive role as three-quarters of the
voters, as indicated by post-election surveys, said they feared another terrorist attack, yet also
believed the country was safer than it was in September 2001. Of those who felt safer, 54 percent
of voters, four out of five voted for Bush. Seventeen percent more voters stated they trusted Bush
more than Kerry to handle terrorism.
16
A huge eighty-eight percent of all voters considered the
war in Iraq to be part of the war on terrorism, thus despite the misgivings about the
Administration’s conduct of the war, voters still leaned toward Bush on this key issue.
17
In Ohio,
the pivotal state that determined the Electoral College outcome, only 40 percent of voters trusted
Kerry to do a good job handling the war, compared to 58 percent for Bush.
18
Although early exit
polls suggested “moral values” was the most important problem facing the nation, more detailed
analysis of post-election surveys confirms that terrorism (45.8 percent) was the most important
issue, followed by employment and job security (39.8 percent), then abortion (32.4 percent), and
gay marriage (26.3 percent).
19
It is well-known that when citizens are worried electoral turnout goes up. The nation was
“anxious,” according to Andrew Kohut at the Pew Research Center, “...Terror, economic well-
being, health care, values: There’s a whole set of worries that are reflected in this election.”
20
Convention