Massive Turnout Puts Bush Over the Top

   The unofficial complete returns from the November 2, 2004 presidential election are in.  Over 119,000,000 voters cast ballots for president, a 13% increase from 2000.

   George Bush received 60,645,844 to John Kerry's 57,313,461 a margin of 3,332,383.  Ralph Nader got 408,065; David Cobb, the official Green Party candidate received 113,288; Libertarian Badnarik got 391,408; Constitution Party candidate Peroutka got 135,681; the Socialist Worker Party Candidates Calero and Harris got 3,994 and 6,984 respectively; Parker got 1,577; Brown got 10,285; Van Auken got 2,227; Amondson got 363; Andress got 763; Dodge, the perennial Prohibition candidate got 173; and the California Peace and Freedom Party's candidate got 25,101.

   All together, 119,059,214 votes were cast for president; an increase of 13,700,808 (13%) over the 105,358,406 record number cast four years ago.  To put these numbers in perspective, 13.7 million votes, the increase in turnout, was more than the total number of votes cast in any presidential election until 1896, when William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan.  Even the 1904 election, a century ago, when Theordore Roosevelt beat Alton Parker (there's a candidate who is easy to forget) the total number of votes cast barely exceeded 13.5 million.

    Or, to put it another way, both Bush and Kerry each received more votes than the total number of votes cast in every presidential election until Eisenhower's landslide in 1952 when 61.5 million votes were cast.  Bush's 60.6 million and Kerry's 57.3 million were each significantly higher than the 48.7 million total votes cast in the 1948 election.

    What this means, in fact, is that lowering the voting age, the voting rights act of 1965, the emancipation of women and the longevity explosion has meant a broadening of the electoral franchise.  Nevertheless, the results of the election show a deeply divided nation.  One white, male, old, religious, xenophobic, rural and suburban; the other polyglot, urban, sceptical, and internationalist.  Without minimizing Kerry's obvious inadequacies; the 2004 election was still a vote in favor of war, deficits, job loses and to validate the Supreme Court's intervention in the 2000 election process which awarded the White House to the candidate who lost the popular vote.

    The Institute of Election Analysis predicted in the wake of the 2000 election that the nation would face recession, if not war and depression.  Bush's narrow 2004 victory makes him the weakest two term president in American history and the 32nd out of 42.  The prediction for the future is more of the same.

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Contact: Joshua Leinsdorf