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Election 2004: What happened, why, what losers are left with

By Benita M. Dodd

Georgia voters are the Republican Party’s to lose after “a bad night for Democrats,” says political scientist Charles Bullock, because the GOP’s future in the aftermath of the elections depends on how Republicans conduct themselves as a majority.

“It’s clear that if anything goes wrong, if the train gets off the track, Republicans have no one to blame but themselves,” Georgia’s pre-eminent political expert told a crowd of more than 120 participants at a Georgia Public Policy Foundation policy briefing luncheon [last week].

“What we see in some of our neighboring states or nearby states, like Florida and Virginia, is that sometimes new Republicans have hard times,” Bullock warned. “Doing things like enacting budgets ... well, the public expects you to do it within the time the legislature is in session.”

“And if you have no one else to blame it on, you better do those kinds of things,” said the UGA political science professor and editor of the Politics section of the “New Georgia Encyclopedia.”

Democrats in Georgia were well aware of what they had to do in order to hold onto the control of the General Assembly, said Bullock: “That it would take a fairly extraordinary gerrymander, because most Georgia voters have been voting Republican for state House and state Senate for the better part of a decade.”

Summing up the reasons for Republicans’ sweep of statewide races in Georgia this year, Bullock attributed it to Georgia’s fairer, judge-drawn redistricting maps this year, augmented by the “coattail effects” of President Bush and GOP Senator-elect Johnny Isakson; the probability of increased turnout from the gay marriage amendment on the ballot, and an intense 72-hour get-out-the-vote campaign by the Republicans in the final hours before the election.

Nationally, the South has become an important region in politics, Bullock said: “We cast 32 percent of the vote. We’re one-fourth of America and we cast a third of the votes.”

In the South, Bush won with 58 percent of the votes, “So Georgia’s 58 percent is right on target with what the rest of the region is doing.”

Bullock, an award-winning researcher whose in-depth analysis of the elections is excerpted at the Foundation’s Web site, www.gppf.org, said that while political scientists usually see an incumbent lose the “undecided” vote 2-to-1, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was unable to win the undecideds by the margin he needed.

Undecideds and late deciders broke 53-46 for Kerry. Additionally, while both sides spent time wooing young voters, Kerry’s young voters didn’t come through.

For Bush strategist Karl Rove, however, “Voters did come through.”

“It was the Religious Right, especially in the South, who were the core constituents who represent the Republican Party,” and voted 73 percent Republican, according to Bullock. “So Rove very much concentrated on trying to make sure to get out the vote to people identified as Christian conservatives, and then to follow up, to encourage them to turn out to vote.”

Consequently, Bush won the votes of those who attend church every week by 61 percent to 39 percent; he won the vote of those who identified themselves as born-again Christians by 78-21 percent.

Bush also increased his share of the Hispanic vote: “He didn’t get a majority, but he’s creeping up on that,” with about 45 percent of the Hispanic vote.

And he managed to narrow the gender gap significantly. Normally, men are likely to vote GOP and women more likely to vote Democrat. But while single women and married woman still break differently, Bush won the “security moms,” the married women worried about family and children in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

All in all, Bullock, who holds the prestigious Richard B. Russell Chair in political science at the University of Georgia, described the election as “a bad night for Democrats.”

Nationally, he said, Democrats’ recovery strategy could include several options:

• Target just a few states in the South, perhaps Florida or Florida plus Arkansas. “Now the Democratic senators from the South can travel around Washington in a Cooper Mini. That’s how far it’s come down to, just four out of 22” senators.

• Target Ohio, Iowa and Missouri: “Had Iowa gone, if Ohio had gone the other way, Kerry would have had had 272 Electoral College votes and would be president-elect now.”

• Concentrate on the Southwest, where “Republicans had some problems, Democrats have some prospects.”

But while moderate Democrats are a dying breed, Republicans still do not have a filibuster-proof U.S Senate, Bullock noted, predicting that “if the Republican agenda goes too far to the right, it’s not going to get enacted.”

Even as a freshman senator, Johnny Isakson is poised to play a major role, given his earlier years in the Georgia General Assembly, where he learned how to work across the aisle, the political scientist said. Isakson also won 57 percent of Georgia’s Hispanic vote in his race against Democratic challenger Denise Majette.

Of the U.S. House races, Bullock said, “There’s no safer job in America than being a member of the United States House.” Of those who got to run in the same districts in 2004 as they ran in 2002, only three were defeated. One was Republican Max Burns in Georgia’s 12th District, an unexpected winner in 2002 who lost to Democrat John Barrow.

And Republicans have had control over the U.S. House now for 10 years, the longest continuous control since 1930, the political analyst said.

At home in Georgia, the voting electorate was 42 percent Republican and 44 percent Democrat, while statewide surveys this year showed Georgia at 40 percent Democratic and 40 percent Republican.

Republicans swept all three statewide contests: the President at 58 percent, Isakson at about 57.9 percent, and Bobby Baker of the Public Service Commission at about 57.3 percent.

“Either there’s been some dip toward the GOP or the Democrats simply didn’t do a very good job of getting the voters out,” Bullock remarked.

Surveys showed the Georgia Democratic caucus “is going to be pretty far off to the left,” with no rural Democrats in the Senate north of the gnat line, the political analyst predicted.

In the state House, Republicans started with a 57-51 lead in uncontested seats, “then picked up all the open seats in districts which looked like they should be voting Republican.”

And that’s not all: Bullock predicts more “low-hanging fruit” for the GOP in districts where longtime incumbency is all that’s keeping a Democrat in the seat.

Nor is the tide likely to turn for Democrats in the General Assembly. Bullock reminded the audience, however, that the governorship faces a strong challenge from the likely top Democratic candidates, Secretary of State Cathy Cox and Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor, both of whom passed up U.S. Senate runs.

“I think (Gov.) Sonny Perdue can’t count on this being an easy contest,” Bullock predicted, “So it looks like we’re going to have another interesting year in 2006.”

[Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians.]