Steve Rosenthal has
this interesting piece in the Washington Post trying to explain why Bush 'won' in Ohio.
Unfortunately he makes at least two serious mistakes - at least upon quick review.
He first says that using a post-election poll a few myths can be dispelled. Namely:
We've done a post-election poll of 1,400 rural and exurban voters in Ohio counties that Bush won by an average of 17 percentage points. Their answers, and a closer look at other poll data, explode a few widely held theories about what happened.
The first myth: Many more churchgoing voters flocked to the polls this year, driven by the Bush "moral values" and the gay marriage referendum.
There's more...
Reality: The 2004 election brought no increase whatsoever in the portion of the voting electorate who attend church on a weekly basis or more often than that, according to exit polls. In Ohio, the share of the electorate represented by frequent churchgoers actually declined from 45 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2004. Nationwide, Bush improved his vote among weekly churchgoers by just one point over 2000, while increasing his support among those who don't go to church by four points.
So how could religious voters have been the basis of Bush's victory, at least in Ohio? Answer: They weren't.
Second myth: The Bush campaign won by mobilizing GOP strongholds and suppressing turnout in Democratic areas.
Reality: Turnout in Democratic-leaning counties in Ohio was up 8.7 percent while turnout in Republican-leaning counties was up slightly less, at 6.3 percent. John Kerry bested Bush in Cuyahoga County (home of Cleveland) by 218,000 votes -- an increase of 42,497 over Gore's 2000 effort. In Stark County (Canton) -- a bellwether lost by Gore -- Kerry won by 4,354.
Third myth: A wave of newly registered Republican voters in fast-growing rural and exurban areas carried Bush to victory.
Reality: Among Ohio's rural and exurban voters, Bush beat Kerry by just five points among newly registered voters and by a mere two points among infrequent voters (those who did not vote in 2000).
Fourth myth: Republicans ran a superior, volunteer-driven mobilization effort.
Reality: When we asked new voters in rural and exurban areas who contacted them during this campaign, we learned that they were just as likely to hear from the Kerry campaign and its allies as from the Bush side. (In contrast, regular voters reported more contact from the GOP.)
Then perhaps it was conservative religious groups or pro-life organizations or the National Rifle Association that reached these new Republican voters? No, according to our post-election polling; only 20 percent of exurban and rural Ohio voters reported that they had been contacted by someone from their church, and only slightly higher percentages were contacted by conservative organizations. In contrast, these same voters in the least unionized regions of Ohio were more likely to have been contacted by a labor union.
Much has been made of the Republican effort to turn out voters through personal contact. Yet our poll shows that voters in these Republican counties were just as likely to be visited by a Kerry supporter at their homes as by a Bush supporter. Fewer than 2 percent were visited by a Bush supporter whom they knew personally.
Among the voters the Republicans targeted, the Democrats went toe-to-toe, knock-to-knock and phone call-to-phone call with them. And rest assured, in urban areas Republicans could not come close to matching the Democratic ground effort.
Still, Kerry lost in Ohio, if narrowly, and that tipped the Electoral College in Bush's favor. If this wasn't a flood of "moral values" voters or a GOP juggernaut, what was it?
So, what are his mistakes?
Well, firstly, his claim that it is a myth that "The Bush campaign won by mobilizing GOP strongholds and suppressing turnout in Democratic areas."
Rosenthal makes the unfortunate mistake of assuming that just because turnout was higher in Democratic counties than Republican counties compared to 2000 (I haven't independently verified if this is the case), this somehow means there was no vote suppression in Democrtic counties! He neglects to mention the actual facts on the ground in Ohio on vote suppression and fails to point out that if not for that the Kerry vote would have been much higher!
The second mistake he makes is to cite the controversial (dubious), massaged national exit polls to make his final conclusions - and that too, conclusions which on further scrutiny say something quite different from what his Ohio results seem to be indicating.
I already wrote about the dubious exit polls here, showing how they were originally (on 11/3) showing Kerry won the popular vote based on demographics of who voted in 2000 and were then discreetly massaged to change the numbers to reflect a Bush popular vote. Here was my conclusion on the massaged results:
- Even though Gore won the popular vote in 2000 and there were more Gore voters than Bush voters in 2000, according to this "latest" version of the "revised" exit poll in 2004, there were 5% more Bush 2000 voters in the 2004 electorate than Gore 2000 voters! According to this, a huge number of Gore 2000 voters (several %) never bothered to show up at the polls in 2004!! This makes little or no sense to me - and I find it utterly implausible considering how strongly the Democratic base was motivated this year.
- The CW now is that Bush/Rove got many more Republican base voters out to the polls this year than they were able to in 2000 and that this contributed to Bush's win in 2004. Yet, the exit poll results show that those WHO DID NOT VOTE in 2000 favored Kerry by a 9% margin!
The repeated revisions of the exit polls as well as the Bush/Gore data makes me even more suspicious of what is going on with the manipulation of the exit poll results. I hope there is a proper investigation of how the data is being manipulated and presented.
Rosenthal, in trying to explain why Bush won Ohio, actually uses the exit poll figures...
- By 54 percent to 41 percent, voters decided that Americans are now safer from terrorist threats than four years ago, national exit polls said.
- By 55 percent to 42 percent, voters accepted Bush's view that Iraq is a part of the war on terrorism. By 51 percent to 45 percent, they still approved of the decision to go to war (though a majority expressed concerns about how the war is going).
- Just 40 percent said they trusted Kerry to do a good job handling the war on terrorism, compared with 58 percent who felt that way about the president.
The Bush campaign was able to persuade some voters who supported Gore in 2000 to turn to Bush in 2004 on the issues of terrorism, strength and leadership. Bush bested Kerry among those who voted in 2000 by five percentage points -- Bush bested Gore in 2000 by three points.
The other major factor was our side's failure to win the economic debate. Despite an economy that was not delivering for many working people in Ohio, the exit poll results show that voters in Ohio did not see Kerry providing a clear alternative. Just 45 percent expressed confidence that Kerry could handle the economy, compared with Bush's 49 percent.
Note his use of the Gore/Bush 2000 vote data from the exit polls. Bush got just 1% more of the Gore 2000 vote than Kerry got of the Bush 2000 vote, per the massaged exit poll. The reason the massaged exit poll assured a Bush victory is that it claims that millions of Gore voters never showed up at the polls this year. Is that really true? If so, why? That is the question Rosenthal should try to answer if he chooses to use the exit poll results.
I think Rosenthal is trying to genuinely follow the data, but he is making the mistake of believing massaged results whose validity is debatable. (The recent downgrading of Bush's Hispanic support in the exit polls should provide independent warning that the exit pollsters are not coming clean with holes in their results.)