To follow is a quick calculation based on 2004 exit polls that shows that at least 36% of Kerry's vote was anti-Bush. The calculation is also illustrative of how to work with numbers coming from cross-tabulations.
Our data comes from this table from 2004 exit polls
YOUR VOTE FOR PRESIDENT WAS MOSTLY... | Bush | Kerry |
For Your Candidate (69%) | 59% | 40% |
Against His Opponent (25%) | 30% | 70% |
An identical or similar question was not asked in 2000 exit polls. Here is how this table is to be read. Keep in mind that about 122 million voted for President in 2004 compared to about 105 million in 2000.
- 69% of the electorate (84.18 Million) voted for their candidate on candidate's merit, but 25% (30.5M) voted against the candidate's opponent (the remaining 6% for "other", 7.32M)
- among those that voted for their candidate, 59% (49.67 mn) were Bush voters and 40% (33.67 mn) were Kerry voters
- among those that voted against the opponent, 30% (9.15M) were Bush voters and 70% (21.35M) were Kerry voters
In other words, at least around 21 million Kerry voters were anti-Bush. Here is the approximate break down of the 2004 vote along these lines:
Pro-Kerry for Kerry: | 33.6 million |
Anti-Bush for Kerry: | 21.3 million |
Pro-Bush for Bush: | 49.6 million |
Anti-Kerry for Bush: | 9.1 million |
Other: | 7.3 million |
The 21.3 million (at least) anti-Bush votes is about 36% of Kerry's total of just over 59 million votes.
These numbers are a good reason why Sen. Kerry needs to stop making statements like these to make a case for a 2008 run: We won 7 million more votes than Al Gore and 10 million more votes than Bill Clinton in 1996 (Kerry speaks with Democrats in Utica, By George Breithaupt, News Staff Writer, May 22, 2006). Senator Kerry can run if he wants to, but he needs to talk about his ideas, his agenda and his record, and not use weak reasoning like this to justify a run.
Finally, there is quite a bit of controversy about 2004 exit polls. I am not an expert in those matters, but most of the versions of exit polls that I have seen put the anti-Bush vote for Kerry in the 35-40% ballpark.