Did Bush really win the election on gay marriage?

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-11-05 03:32pm

"So lots of pundits, including you, have been attributing Bush's success nationally to his having excited the base over the gay marriage issue. In particular, the strategy of using the ballot initiatives in 11 states, thereby dragging religious conservatives to the polls to vote against marriage and at the same time check the box next to Bush, is regarded as having been particularly effective.

That is, of course, fiction. Bush improved his share of the popular vote by 3.2% from 2000 to 2004 (47.9 in 2000, 51.1 in 2004). Now how did he do in the states which had anti-marriage ballot initiatives?

Arkansas +3.0%
Georgia +3.3%
Kentucky +3.1%
Michigan +1.8%
Mississippi +2.2%
Montana +0.7%
North Dakota +2.2%
Ohio +1.0%
Oklahoma +5.3%
Oregon +0.8%
Utah +4.2%

Only in two states (Utah and Oklahoma) did he gain a significantly higher vote share than he did nationwide. Maybe comparing to the national popular vote is misleading, so let's compare each of those states to a neighboring, politically-similar state which did not have an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot:

Missouri +2.9 (AR +3.0)
Florida +3.4 (GA +3.3)
Tennessee +5.7 (KY +3.1)
Wisconsin +1.5 (MI +1.8]
Alabama +6.0 (MS +2.2)
Idaho +1.2 (MT +0.7)
South Dakota -0.4 (ND +2.2)
Pennsylvania +2.0 (OH +1.0)
Texas +1.8 (OK +5.3)
Washington +1.2 (OR +0.8]
Wyoming +1.2 (UT +4.2)

Again, not much. In only 3 cases (UT-WY, ND-SD, and OK-TX) did Bush improve a lot more in a state with an anti-marriage initiative than he did in the state with which it was paired. And, in the case of North Dakota, the hotly contested Senate race in South Dakota may have skewed things a bit; a better comparison might be Nebraska, where Bush was +3.0% better in 2004 than in 2000, a better improvement than what he got in North Dakota.

That leaves two states, Oklahoma and Utah, which had an anti-marriage initiative on the ballot and in which Bush's vote share improved more both relative to the nation as a whole and relative to the neighboring state selected.

It is certainly possible that the fact that the Bush administration raised the issue to the level to which did led to increased turnout among religious conservatives nationwide, which then resulted in Bush's overall improved vote share over his 2000 performance. However, one would also expect that this vote share improvement would have been particularly high in states in which the marriage issue was particularly relevant. On the contrary, there is no evidence that suggests that the strategy of putting the anti-marriage initiatives on the ballot in several states did anything to improve Bush's performance in those states."

Thoughts? Personally, I think that Bush's victory is more attributable to simple demographics - a small but significant sliver of the electorate shifted right after 9/11 - and the incompetence of the Kerry campaign.

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-11-05 03:34pm

If you go by DU he did. They are in the middle of a Civil war over there about Gay Marriage and the drag on the Party

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-11-05 03:55pm

You can see how ridiculous their methods are by taking note of the fact that they used Texas, Missouri, Florida, and AlaFuckingBama as examples of states which are not anti-gay

When that's a guy's idea of a non-homophobic control group, I'd say he's either being dishonest or stupid, or possibly both.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-11-05 03:56pm

theski wrote:If you go by DU he did. They are in the middle of a Civil war over there about Gay Marriage and the drag on the Party

DU's ranting about this election is absolutely hilarious.

"Does anyone know if Ohio used electronic polls, 'cause I've done regression analysis that shows Kerry's exit poll numbers were better than they turned out to be in states with electronic voting and no paper trails, but were the same in states that use electronic voting with paper trails. Never mind the fact that I don't even know if Ohio used electronic voting without paper trails or not, I've got conclusive data for EVERY SINGLE STATE! YEAARGH!"

Here's another goldie:

Kerry won. Here's the facts.

I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist
examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in
the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among
Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to
49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

Either that, or the journalist in question doesn't know what a margin of error or a normal distribution is, or the polls were wrong. Brilliant.

This one's my favorite, though. Note that this is an ACTUAL QUOTE.

First of all, this election was definitely rigged. I have no doubt about it. It's a statistical impossibility that Bush got 8 million more votes than he got last time. In 2000, he got 15 million votes from right-wing Christians, and there are approximately 19 million of them in the country. They were eager to get the other 4 million. That was pretty much Karl Rove's strategy to get Bush elected.

But given Bush's low popularity ratings and the enormous number of new voters -- who skewed Democratic -- there is no way in the world that Bush got 8 million more votes this time. I think it had a lot to do with the electronic voting machines. Those machines are completely untrustworthy, and that's why the Republicans use them. Then there's the fact that the immediate claim of Ohio was not contested by the news media -- when Andrew Card came out and claimed the state, not only were the votes in Ohio not counted, they weren't even all cast. I would have to hear a much stronger argument for the authenticity, or I should say the veracity, of this popular vote for Bush before I'm willing to believe it. If someone can prove to me that it happened, that Bush somehow pulled 8 million magic votes out of a hat, OK, I'll accept it. I'm an independent, not a Democrat, and I'm not living in denial.

And that's not even talking about Florida, which is about as Democratic a state as Guatemala used to be. The news media is obliged to make the Republicans account for all these votes, and account for the way they were counted. Simply to embrace this result as definitive is irrational. But there is every reason to question it ... I find it beyond belief that the press in this formerly democratic country would not have made the integrity of the electoral system a front page, top-of-the-line story for the last three years. I worked and worked and worked to get that story into the media, and no one touched it until your guy did.

I actually got invited to a Kerry fundraiser so I could talk to him about it. I raised the issue directly with him and with Teresa. Teresa was really indignant and really concerned, but Kerry just looked down at me -- he's about 9 feet tall -- and I could tell it just didn't register. It set off all his conspiracy-theory alarms and he just wasn't listening.

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-11-05 04:00pm

That last one is either Elfdart or Nova Andromeda

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-11-05 04:00pm

theski wrote:That last one is either Elfdart or Nova Andromeda

Are you being serious?

theski · Post by **theski** » 2004-11-05 04:02pm

Master of Ossus wrote:
theski wrote:That last one is either Elfdart or Nova Andromeda
Are you being serious?

Nah...

but its fun being a mole over there... even got to hang out and watch the Heads exploding after the big lockdown...

Augustus · Post by **Augustus** » 2004-11-05 04:17pm

Florida is actually a pretty cosmopolitain state. After all if gets yearly transplants into its population from places like Jersey and New York. Not to mention Florida has some of the most organized and open Gay community who have even established high-profile events around their ...uh, er...gayness (e.g. Gay Days at Disney, Gay cruises with Carnival out of Tampa and Maimi, ect). I know several openly gay men who live a very happy (by their acount) and open life style in Florida.

That being said I can't comment on Texas, Missouri or Alabama.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-11-05 04:21pm

Augustus wrote:Florida is actually a pretty cosmopolitain state. After all if gets yearly transplants into its population from places like Jersey and New York. Not to mention Florida has some of the most organized and open Gay community who have even established high-profile events around their ...uh, er...gayness (e.g. Gay Days at Disney, Gay cruises with Carnival out of Tampa and Maimi, ect). I know several openly gay men who live a very happy (by their acount) and open life style in Florida.

That being said I can't comment on Texas, Missouri or Alabama.

The point here is that they based their conclusions upon real facts but horrible logic. The fact that a state did not have an anti-gay marriage initiative on its ballot does not prove that its population is not anti-gay. It only means that its government didn't draft such an initiative in time for the federal election for whatever reason, and there are many possible reasons other than "the state's population supports gay marriage".

As for Florida in particular, it has certain urban centres which are fairly cosmopolitan, but its rural areas are most decidedly not.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2004-11-05 04:43pm

Augustus wrote:That being said I can't comment on Texas, Missouri or Alabama.

Houston has a thriving gay community but anyone who thinks Texas isn't anti-gay is either on drugs, a habitual liar or an idiot.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2004-11-06 05:38pm

Florida and Georgia are very different politically, though. In Georgia, even Atlanta tends to vote conservative from what I've seen. Here, Miami and the Keys are mucho liberal (I know a city councilwoman in Key West...half her constituents are gay, the other half are "fishermen" who don't give a shit about anything). The Panhandle's conservative. The I-4 Corridor is the balance of the state, running from Tampa through Orlando to the Cape. It's fairly balanced; there's some agricultural/rural areas, but there's also the high-tech industries, from NASA to Lockheed Martin to Siemen-Westinghouse to Electronic Arts. It's a bad comparison.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2004-11-06 05:52pm

Atlanta - at least the city itself - does not vote conservative. Of that I can assure you. The suburbs are a different story.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2004-11-06 05:59pm

The Dark wrote:Florida and Georgia are very different politically, though. In Georgia, even Atlanta tends to vote conservative from what I've seen. Here, Miami and the Keys are mucho liberal (I know a city councilwoman in Key West...half her constituents are gay, the other half are "fishermen" who don't give a shit about anything). The Panhandle's conservative. The I-4 Corridor is the balance of the state, running from Tampa through Orlando to the Cape. It's fairly balanced; there's some agricultural/rural areas, but there's also the high-tech industries, from NASA to Lockheed Martin to Siemen-Westinghouse to Electronic Arts. It's a bad comparison.

High-tech industry does not preclude a socially liberal outlook in it's employees.

Marksist · Post by **Marksist** » 2004-11-06 07:18pm

Augustus wrote:Florida is actually a pretty cosmopolitain state. After all if gets yearly transplants into its population from places like Jersey and New York. Not to mention Florida has some of the most organized and open Gay community who have even established high-profile events around their ...uh, er...gayness (e.g. Gay Days at Disney, Gay cruises with Carnival out of Tampa and Maimi, ect). I know several openly gay men who live a very happy (by their acount) and open life style in Florida.

Florida is pretty cosmopolitan in the Urban and University areas as you can see from the county by county election map. MOST of Florida is ass-backwards fundie territory and is very socially conservative. Most of rural Florida is just like the rest of its counterparts in Georgia, Carolinas, Alabama, and the rest of the south.

Symmetry · Post by **Symmetry** » 2004-11-07 02:05am

Darth Wong wrote:You can see how ridiculous their methods are by taking note of the fact that they used Texas, Missouri, Florida, and AlaFuckingBama as examples of states which are not anti-gay

Wong, he's not useing them as examples of states that aren't anti-gay, he's using them as examples of states without anti gay marriage ballot initiatives, which you could tell if you read the article before you flamed. The point is that many people had initially assumed that the presence of anti gay marriage initiatives on the ballots would increase turnout among conservatives, but this does not actually seem to have been the case.

Xenophobe3691 · Post by **Xenophobe3691** » 2004-11-07 10:29am

Darth Wong wrote: The point here is that they based their conclusions upon real facts but horrible logic. The fact that a state did not have an anti-gay marriage initiative on its ballot does not prove that its population is not anti-gay. It only means that its government didn't draft such an initiative in time for the federal election for whatever reason, and there are many possible reasons other than "the state's population supports gay marriage".

As for Florida in particular, it has certain urban centres which are fairly cosmopolitan, but its rural areas are most decidedly not.

Actually, it does tend to show that most of the population is not anti-gay. The way the Florida Constitution works is that if you have enough petitioner's signatures, you can get any amendment onto the ballot (Such as the one for the fucking bullet train, or the even dumber one about Pigs Rights, fucking hippies...). The fact that they couldn't get enough signatures to put such an amendment on the ballot says a lot about what the state's like. Besides, I live in Central Florida. It isn't all that bad...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-11-07 02:39pm

Symmetry wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:You can see how ridiculous their methods are by taking note of the fact that they used Texas, Missouri, Florida, and AlaFuckingBama as examples of states which are not anti-gay
Wong, he's not useing them as examples of states that aren't anti-gay, he's using them as examples of states without anti gay marriage ballot initiatives, which you could tell if you read the article before you flamed. The point is that many people had initially assumed that the presence of anti gay marriage initiatives on the ballots would increase turnout among conservatives, but this does not actually seem to have been the case.

Are you deliberately trying to be stupid? He is trying to use states without anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballots as a control group for the purpose of generating a statistical correlation between gay marriage and the Bush vote, in order to "disprove" the notion that the gay-marriage issue pushed Bush over the top. Do I have to fucking spell out what that means, moron?

Imperial Overlord · Post by **Imperial Overlord** » 2004-11-07 11:58pm

You might have to spell it out, so I will try to take the job off your hands.

1) Control group is flawed. So. . . .

2) Analysis using flawed control group is inaccurate. So . . .

3) The conclussion is not valid.

White Cat · Post by **White Cat** » 2004-11-08 12:51am

Are you deliberately trying to be stupid? He is trying to use states without anti-gay marriage initiatives on the ballots as a control group for the purpose of generating a statistical correlation between gay marriage and the Bush vote, in order to "disprove" the notion that the gay-marriage issue pushed Bush over the top. Do I have to fucking spell out what that means, moron?

No, he's trying to disprove the notion that the gay marriage ballot initiatives put Bush over the top. That's not the same thing as whether Bush's opposition to gay marriage throughout his term (the general "gay marriage issue") put him over the top, although it's easy to confuse the two.

Put another way...

You can see how ridiculous their methods are by taking note of the fact that they used Texas, Missouri, Florida, and AlaFuckingBama as examples of states which are not anti-gay

No, he used them as examples of "states which did not have gay marriage initiatives on the ballot."