Glenn Reynolds said something that's been on my mind for the past couple of days:
[T]o me, the election was about the war. But if victory has a thousand fathers, it also produces a thousand people with their hands out, wanting to share in the spoils.
Much is being made of exit poll statistics showing that "Moral Values" was the number one concern of all voters, and certainly first and foremost on the minds of Bush voters. Leaving aside the validity of the exit polls themselves, as well as the precise definition of moral values, I wish to examine whether this is even true according to the data presented.
According to the CNN poll cited by Eugene Volokh, "Moral Values" was given as the most important issue by 22% of voters. Of this number, 80% voted for Bush, and 18% for Kerry.
80% of 22% is 16% 17.6%. [Error corrected; see comment below.]
But 19% of voters stated their number one concern was "Terrorism," with 86% of that number voting for Bush.
86% of 19% is 16.34% (meaning a higher percentage of Bush voters stated terrorism was their number one reason than moral values.)
But wait just a minute!
Another 15% gave "Iraq" as their number one reason, with 26% of them voting for Bush. (I find it hard to believe that 73% of them voted for Kerry, but that's what the poll says. I suspect that the poll was designed to split the war on terrorism from the war in Iraq, and I am very suspicious of these numbers. But my purpose here is not to argue with the exit polls' data; only to examine whether the statements made about them are accurate.)
Anyway, 26% of 15% makes another 3.9%, which makes Iraq and terrorism -- seen as the same issue for Bush voters if not Kerry voters and CNN -- the number one issue for over 20% of Bush voters.
Since when is 16% greater than 20%?
And if we discount the Bush/Kerry split and add 15% (Iraq) to 19% (Terrorism), that means "THE WAR" was considered the number one issue by 34% of all voters.
Since when is 22% greater than 34%?
I do not mean to belittle anyone's moral values, nor do I mean to underestimate the importance of morality. (Longer discussion here.)
I just don't think the numbers -- regardless of whether they are accurate or not -- are being used accurately.
UPDATE: A commenter just noted that 80% of 22% is 17.6%. Sorry! My mistake! That means that a lower percentage of Bush voters stated terrorism was the most important issue (even if the total for terrorism and Iraq exceeds the number for moral values.)
MORE: Boi from Troy discusses possible meanings of the phrase "moral values."
But what are moral values? While alot of people have jumped the gun and said "gay bashing!" the category is so broad, it is certainly not just that. In Florida, a ballot measure on parental notification drove voters to the polls, so abortion issues are also considered "moral values" by Bush voters.
Divorce is considered immoral by many in the Catholic Church, so could John Kerry's pattern of marrying-and-divorcing-and-marrying-up-for-money have been perceived as a flawed moral value on his part by the 10% of hispanic voters who switched to vote for Bush?
If the issues that compose "moral values" were broken out the way that the media broke out "Taxes" and "The Economy" or "War on Terror" and "War on Iraq", we would have probably seen gay marriage, abortion and other such issues polling each in the single digits. Similarly, more truthful headlines could be written saying "Economic Policies drive voters to polls" since 25% of voters said they were voting on either "Taxes" or "The Economy"...(Via Glenn Reynolds.)
Precisely. It strikes me that there's an ideologically driven agenda, fueled by activists hoping that code language will fool people into believing that their numbers prove something other than what they actually prove.
If Kerry had won, the war would undoubtedly be repudiated in the press everywhere. But now that Bush has won, it has been decided that he won on other issues like gay marriage and abortion. Behind this is a cynical determination among those on the left to deny the President a mandate for the war. And it is a desperate effort to avoid facing up to the broad support of the American public for the war.
Divide and conquer is a time-honored technique of the left. Bear in mind that much of the current-day lifestyle acrimony that we call the "Culture War" dates back to the Vietnam War -- where it was encouraged and cultivated by cynical antiwar activists with a bigger agenda....
posted by Eric on 11.04.04 at 03:28 PM
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» Morals? What does the MSM know of morals? from Swanky Conservative
Eric at Classical Values has some numbers the MainStream Media (MSM) is ignoring or, at best, spinning: The percentages of what issues drove people to vote.
I do not mean to belittle anyone's moral values, nor do I mean to underestimate the imp... [Read More]
Tracked on November 4, 2004 10:20 PM
» 急がば回れ。 from The White Peril
Janis Gore, who occasionally sends me gently inquiring e-mails about the most contentious topics imaginable, asked what I thought of Andrew Sullivan's tone when discussing the election results. His take is, naturally, that Karl Rove used his evil Karl ... [Read More]
Tracked on November 4, 2004 10:26 PM
See Andrew Sullivan. I think he is making a pretty convincing case. The issue was faggots. The Democrats realize it now and have spent the last two days backing away from gay allies. It is a really interesting phenomenon, to say the least. Bill Bennett wants the Bush Administration to use the mandate to engrave "conservative values" into law. As I said before, this should be really interesting. Of all value systems, I'd rather have the Classical one than the Revival Tent one. At least the Ancients understood Reason. Huh. Where is my copy of In Verrem?
bink · November 4, 2004 06:10 PM
Eric, I think you are on to something. This recitation of "morality and values" by the media has been naggin away at me since yesterday. Katrina vanden Heuvel was especially grating on Chris Mathews show last night as she dismissed this as codeword for homophobia. The turnout of gay votes for Bush tears her argument up.
I'm betting the questions asked of voters about why they voted got answers that span the spectrum. Pollsters and media types lumped them into the catch-all bucket of morality. Your numbers are impressive as even with the revised percentage, terrorism/Iraq is right up there. Hardly the image of voters the MSM is putting out.
Moral values, i.e., the spiritual War within this country, the most important issue in the long term. In the short term, the most important issue is the military War. I've already voted for Bush on the basis of the latter, so that's a closed chapter. The War I'm fighting now is the spiritual War.
The biggest mistake libertarians, as well as liberals and the Left, have made is in underestimating the Enemy on the Right, the Enemy Within. As I've said before, a preacher in the middle of Mississippi has a clearer and deeper grasp of what the real issues are than do a hundred sociology professors at Berkeley.
They are very clever. Their most brilliant masterstroke has, in fact, been the feat of getting the libertarians, liberals, and the Left to call them "religious conservatives". They love nothing better. If THEY, the collectivists, are "religious conservatives", then are WE, the individualists, "irreligious radicals"? That is what they have got everybody to think. They have seized for themselves the concept "moral values". They have made themselves seem to be the sole champions of absolute values and spirituality.
This is completely Orwellian, of course, like the Left's claim to be the champions of "diversity" and "dissent when they are, too obviously, nothing of the kind. But they have been far more successful than the Left.
We, their opponents, the champions of the individual man and woman, must fight the collectivist Enemy Within on the commanding heights of eternal, absolute, transcendent, spiritual and moral values, dogmas. That is what the battle demands. Nothing less will do. As in the military War, so in the spiritual War, we must fight for victory.
My holy dogmas: the holiness of sexuality, of homosexuality, and of marriage, of homosexual marriage, the polytheistic Godliness of sexiness, the polytheistic Godliness of the self as the fountainhead of all values. Up With Beauty!
39% of Bush voters took the war (terror, Iraq) as the main issue
34% of Bush voters took moral values to be their main issue.
I think you need to divide your "over 20%" by Bush's 52% of the popular vote to get the "of Bush voters" figure. When you do that you get the 39 and 34 figures.
Yes, the ambiguity of the poll's "moral values" troubles me. I'm an atheist in favor of gay marriage, and I voted for Bush mainly on moral values, the most important application of which at the moment is the war. The Dems are rotting at the core, and their stance on the war shows this in greatest relief; the GOP is not rotting, and their stance on the war shows this. The poll was too ambiguous.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
Excellent.