Our friends over at Real Clear Politics have put together a
table of 2000 vs 2004 at the state level, purporting to show how Bush's smashing win was complete and absolute. Can you say mandate? Well, it might be more appropriate to include Kerry's numbers as well, although playing with the numbers won't catch Kerry up.
The across the board improvement in percentages for Bush is striking, and Kerry did less well, but he had his moments. For those who like to play with numbers, there were 27 states (+DC) where Kerry increased his per cent from 2000 for Gore, and the top 6 were VT, AK, MN, OR, DC and ME to Bush's TN, AL, OK, NJ, LA and NY. Clearly, there was a 9/11 effect here (as RCP suggests elsewhere) even though NY and NJ will remain true blue both locally and nationally (and their large populations will affect Bush's overall popular vote margin). While national campaigning by Bush vs target state campaigning by Kerry may also affect some of this, the presence of NY/NJ/CT on the 'Bush did better' list can't be ignored.
A different way of looking at the numbers is to subtract Bush's improvement from 2000 within each state from Kerry's (the higher the number, the better Kerry 'did'). Here the top 6 for Kerry do not change, whereas for Bush his 6 'improved' states were AL, TN, NJ, HI, OK, RI. Three of the six are still royal blue, and TN lost native son Gore compared to 2000.
All in all, I think there's a definite national security-9/11 flavor to the numbers, and the question is whether there's any lasting relevence to that. Many have blogged/opined on the 'Dems are weak on security' idea, but unless anyone, Dem or Repub is clear on policy, you can't beat something with nothing (my view of Kerry's problem is that he was not clear on Iraq or the WoT).
Despite the above, Kerry got 55 57 million people to vote for him and almost won (pending recounts). Like Nixon and Vietnam, timing is everything when it's not location ('72 vs '73), and the American public is not ready to see Iraq as lost. That time will come, and when it does, the architects of that policy will pay a price politically. Bush's war is going to drive the election in 2008 (and likely 2006) no matter who the Dems run.