Moral Values, an Election Ploy?
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Politics
Conventional wisdom (as well as data from exit polls which were wrong concerning the presidential vote, but all of a sudden we're paying attention to them) says that "moral values" and, in particular, amendments to ban gay marriages contributed to Bush's re-election.Any way, back to "moral values" and the thought that these eleven gay marriage proposals some how led to Bush's re-election. Some have the opinion that this strategy might work in other states. Spivak & Bice in yesterday's Milwaukee News Journal, for example, reason that it may be put on the ballot in Wisconsin to turn out evangelicals to vote out Governor Jim Doyle when he runs for re-election in a couple of years:

"If Karl Rove, President Bush's political brain, worked in Wisconsin, here's what might happen:

"Right-wing Republicans would push to get a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the ballot in late 2006 when first-term Gov. Jim Doyle is up for re-election. The move would bring out conservative types in droves who - as long as they're in the voting booth - would then cast a vote for the Republican running against Doyle, a liberal Dem from Madison.

"A similar strategy worked just fine for Bush last week. The president benefited from increased turnout sparked by similar proposals being on 11 state ballots.

"Hey, wait a minute, maybe Rove does work here - or, at least, devotees of his shrewd style. It turns out just such a prohibition is on track to make it on the general election ballot in Wisconsin sometime in the next two years." (italics mine)

Well, maybe. But this assumes that opposition to gay marriage is a Republican/ Democrat thing. Not so fast. Let's look at some numbers.

State	Yes Vote		Bush Vote
Arkansas	746,382	75%	566,678	54%
Georgia	2,317,981	76%	1,889,331	58%
Kentucky	1,222,240	75%	1,066,736	60%
Michigan	2,686,139	59%	2,306,292	48%
Mississippi	924,540	86%	666,396	60%
Montana	294,056	67%	261,939	59%
North Dakota	222,899	73%	195,998	63%
Ohio	3,249,157	62%	2,796,147	51%
Oklahoma	1,075,079	76%	959,655	66%
Oregon	979,049	57%	818,792	47%
Utah	562,619	66%	608,851	71%

Notice that first, the "Yes" vote outpolled Bush in every state except Utah. This means that even some Kerry supporters voted for the initiatives. Even two states that went for Kerry, Michigan and Oregon voted "Yes." Only two states were the so-called "battleground" states, Michigan and Ohio. So I'm not quite sure how this affected the outcome that much, nor how it would be that much of a reason for Republicans to put it on the ballot.

Paul Freedman writing for Slate is more to the point about moral values as an issue in this election:

"More to the point, the morality gap didn't decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you're trying to explain why the president's vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don't help.

"If the morality gap doesn't explain Bush's re-election, what does? A good part of the answer lies in the terrorism gap. Nationally, 49 percent of voters said they trusted Bush but not Kerry to handle terrorism; only 31 percent trusted Kerry but not Bush. This 18-point gap is particularly significant in that terrorism is strongly tied to vote choice: 99 percent of those who trusted only Kerry on the issue voted for him, and 97 percent of those who trusted only Bush voted for him. Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry."