To figure out how Democrats need to get votes back, one needs to figure out where they’ve been lost. Despite the so-called liberal media saying that it’s a brave new world of religious conservatism in America, the election results just don’t support this idea.
Bush won the presidential election by a mere 3.1 percent. The GOP won contested House races by a combined total of only 1.2 percent. Democrats actually received more votes in Senate races, garnering about four percent more votes. Democrats also won the vote in governor races by around 1 percent.
If you combine the vote totals for the presidential, senate, governor and contested house races, Republicans only received 1.1 million more votes out of over 300 million cast, not even one half of 1 percent.
Exit polls also don’t seem to support the idea that Bush won on moral values. While moral values were the most cited issue, it was only mentioned by 22 percent of those surveyed. Most of those people probably would have voted for Bush anyway. Even if some of those voters were new voters, Kerry still won new voters by nearly 10 percent.
On top of this, 55 percent still say that abortion should be always or mostly legal, with only 16 percent saying abortion should be always illegal. While 72 percent oppose gay marriage, 60 percent support legalization of civil unions. This doesn’t appear to be the great “Christian moral majority” that the press and conservative groups are saying it is.
There are two numbers that the press and Democrats should be looking at. The first number is the fact that 8 million Gore voters from 2000 stayed home. Had these people voted, Kerry would have won the popular vote by at least 3 million votes, and probably would have won the Electoral College.
Second, exit polls show that a majority of Bush voters who describe themselves as moderates were voting Republican for the first time since 1988.
The election wasn’t decided by Christian conservatives voting for Bush; it was decided by centrists not voting for Kerry. This shows that Bush was successful in painting Kerry as a liberal.
The first step to winning back voters is to nominate someone who can’t be painted as overly liberal like Kerry was.
Second, Democrats won’t have to run against a war-time president, which is always a daunting task. Also, Bush’s support was very thin beyond the traditional Republican issue of morals and the issue of terrorism.
Third, Democrats need to reframe issues. The newly elected Democratic governor of Montana was able to successfully frame issues in a way that answered the question, “What’s in it for me?” That is a tactic that Democrats should use far more often for far more issues in far more places.
With Republicans losing their biggest election point, and having no appealing candidate as of yet for 2008, Democrats already appear to be in a good position to win in 2008 as long as they do these simple things.

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