Excellent analysis[NYT}.........."No overarching national themes emerged from the voting, but a few things were clear as the last ballots were tabulated, including these:
¶Neither of the candidates, for all their exertions, ever closed his deal with the American public. Each candidate won overwhelming majorities among voters in their own parties, but independent voters — the crucial quarter of the electorate that decides so many elections — split evenly.
¶In the final stages of the race, Mr. Bush faded. Among those who made up their minds in the last week, the surveys showed, slightly more than half went to Mr. Gore; among those who decided earlier, a bare majority ended up favoring Mr. Bush.
¶Mr. Bush, who announced early on that he was a compassionate conservative, did a good job of rubbing the rough edges off his ideology, a better job than his rival. Voters were more likely to see Mr. Gore's positions as too liberal than to see Mr. Bush's views as too far to the right.
¶To a degree difficult to quantify, President Clinton appeared to have been a drag on Mr. Gore's candidacy. Fully 60 percent of the voters interviewed from coast to coast, a startling figure, said they disliked Mr. Clinton as a person, whatever they thought of his policies. They said they will remember the president more for the scandals that plagued him than for anything else, and some of that seemed to brush off on Mr. Gore, whom voters found less honest and trustworthy than Mr. Bush.
Almost one voter in five said their vote had been cast to register opposition to Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Bush gained valuable support from the pivotal border states, running a strong campaign in Missouri, Kentucky and West Virginia. Mr. Gore put on a powerful showing in the hard-fought Great Lakes States.
Suburbanites, so avidly pursued by both nominees, split 50-50. The suburbs cast well over 40 percent of the total vote in yesterday's election.
Without the backing of labor Mr. Gore would have been in deep trouble. Mr. Bush took 60 percent of the vote in nonunion households nationwide. On the other hand, Mr. Bush was heavily dependent on the white religious right, gaining the votes of three of four people who so identified themselves.
A number of important questions remained unanswered last night, quite apart from the victor's identity.
¶With neither nominee within reach of a big popular majority, and the polls suggesting a close electoral contest as well, how would the winner lead? As John F. Kennedy showed after winning in a squeaker in 1960, leaders can lead whatever their majorities, but it is hard for those who win narrowly to push broad legislative programs. Many Kennedy administration ideas came to fruition only after Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory in 1964.
¶Is American politics entering a nonideological or an anti-ideological phase? Only six years ago, the Republicans swept into control of the House on a radical right-wing program. But they were able to enact relatively little of it, and in this election, Congressional and presidential candidates alike did their best to skitter toward the center.
¶What does the country want? The candidates enunciated different views of government, with Mr. Gore espousing a more activist philosophy. When voters were asked which candidate shared their view of government, about a third said Mr. Gore, about a third said Mr. Bush, and the rest said both or neither. Yet in response to other questions, as they left the polls, voters said that they wanted less government and that they preferred economic growth to protecting the environment, another small-government view.
Mr. Bush received the votes of most people who disliked Mr. Clinton, who made their decisions on the basis of personality and who wanted across-the-board tax cuts. No surprises there. Mr. Gore won his backing among those who put the greatest emphasis on experience, grasp of the issues, targeted tax cuts and promises of health care reform. Mr. Bush had hoped that his promise of a radical overhaul of Medicare would prove popular.
Signs of confusion flowed through the voters' responses. In the surveys, almost two-thirds of the respondents said the country was on the right track as opposed to headed in the wrong direction. But in moral terms, close to 60 percent said the country was on the wrong track.
The political map and political convention were knocked askew by the results. Mr. Gore lost Mr. Clinton's home state, Arkansas, but his own, Tennessee. In Tennessee two-thirds of those polled said it made no difference in their voting decision that Mr. Gore was from their state.
No president has been elected without carrying his home state since Woodrow Wilson, a former governor of New Jersey, lost that state in the 1916 election.
Changing patterns of opinion formation were reflected in the survey. More than 60 percent of those questioned said they used the Internet on a regular basis, and almost 30 percent said they sought political information when they did so.
A slim majority of those who said they used the Internet cast their votes for Mr. Bush.
One big winner was the political polling trade. For weeks, as surveys disagreed with one another and showed large swings in some states, their methodology was questioned. But most of the final surveys, completed in many cases Sunday and Monday, came remarkably close to the actual votes, state by state.
The final CBS News survey, released on Election Day morning, showed Mr. Gore with a lead of one percentage point in the popular vote. |
