RALEIGH – I have too many follow-up points to make on Election 2004 to develop in any coherent, long-form way. The only way to handle them is just to jot them down in the form of a bulleted list, in no particular order and with varying degrees of emphasis:
• Beware of anyone trusting the exit polls in North Carolina or elsewhere as a source of unimpeachable, unassailable analysis of what happened Tuesday. I have used them myself without adequately warning readers as to their validity, so let me hasten to do that now. There was obviously something very, very wrong with the sampling process. When the midday exit polls started leaking, the proper response should have been to ignore them, as you do not evaluate the success or failure of a soufflé by tasting the batter. Still, everyone read them and freaked out.
Even towards the evening, when a larger sample was available in each state and precinct information available to begin weighting them, a pro-Democratic bias persisted. In the North Carolina exit poll, the sample is 59 percent female, 26 percent black. Fifteen percent had post-graduate college degrees. These are all likely exaggerated by four to eight percentage points.
• That loud popping sound you heard about 3:30 am Eastern Time was the exploding head of Michael Moore.
• That seismic lurch you felt at approximately the same time was the impact of millions of Europeans getting up, turning on the news, and falling backwards onto their trendy Swedish furniture.
• I am looking forward to the strongly conservative fiscal agenda of our strongly fiscal conservative governor, who was just re-elected because of his strong, fiscally conservative leadership.
• According to unofficial results, Republican candidates for the North Carolina General Assembly got more total votes statewide than Democratic candidates did. Yet in the district-by-district tally, Democrats expanded their lead in the NC Senate and recaptured the NC House. By the convoluted logic of Al Gore, Maxine Waters, and the late Michael Moore, House Speaker Jim Black and Senate leader Marc Basnight have no mandate to govern and should just step aside right now.
• In case the point isn’t obvious, a major reason for Democratic legislative victories on Tuesday was the set of district maps drawn late last year by Democrats and allied Republicans. Purposeful delays prevented the districts from being adjudicated before the 2004 election cycle. The strategy was immensely successful for the Ds.
• Republicans do best in North Carolina gubernatorial races when they nominate candidates from Mecklenburg County. The trend covers eight elections since 1976.
• Nationwide, Republicans lost a little of the ground they’ve made in state governments but remain in a slight majority. They control 49 legislative chambers, the Democrats 47, there are two ties, and Nebraska is unicameral and nonpartisan. The GOP retained its 28-22 majority in governorships. The biggest prize was North Carolina, kept by the Democrats. The next-largest states, Missouri and Indiana, traded in Ds for Rs.
• Predictions of a record-shattering turnout in North Carolina this year were a little off. The AP is reporting 63 percent of registered voters, which is lower than the turnouts in 1992 and all the presidential years of the 1970s and 1980s. However, that’s somewhat of an unfair comparison because the universe of registered voters has been artificially expanded with people who have been aggressively signed up by party activists but who are unlikely to participate. As a percentage of the voting-aged population, the 2004 turnout appears to have been about 54-55 percent, definitely above the normal turnouts of the past two decades — but not spectacularly so.
• Several supposedly ironclad rules of political science were invalidated this year. Higher national turnout favored the Republicans (in NC, there is no obvious correlation between turnout and partisan advantage going back in time). The undecided vote in the last presidential polls did not break for the challenger (the pattern continues to hold to some degree in lower-level races).
• Some counties continue to be bellwethers in state politics. Cleveland, Rutherford, and Polk county voters chose Bush, Burr, Easley, and a Democratic state senator. This WNC region swings when the state swings. Same deal in New Hanover (sorry, Patrick), Brunswick, Dare, Person, and Lee. Rockingham fits the bill except for state senator. Other counties also voted with the winners in 2004, but the above counties almost always vote for the winning candidates for governor and other offices going back in time.
• The 2008 election cycle started Tuesday night after the polls closed. Sweet dreams.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.
Update: Late on Thursday night, I had an epiphany and blogged about another myth being advanced about the 2004 elections. Did you hear the one about how Bush’s victory was due primarily to more religious voters showing up at the polls this year than in 2000? Nope.