Voting

This should be the last voting related post for a while.

All this talk of a "mandate" for Bush is making me ill. It's the media trying to put words in his mouth. At the same time, I don't think Bush acknowledges that there is a significant divide within the population (in some ways, he probably can't since it makes him look weaker). So perhaps, one of the media outlets could take a look at voters and see how supporters of Gore and Bush in 2000 decided to vote in 2004. Did they stay party loyal or did they switch sides? Was it at any greater rate than in past elections? My hypothesis would be that larger numbers switched sides from Bush to Kerry (purely on anecdotal evidence), and it was larger than usual. That might be the best measure of how Bush's first term was perceived by the electorate.