Election 2004: Analysis

President Bush claimed victory on Wednesday afternoon after his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, formally ended his bid for the White House.

Washington Post Staff Writer Dan Balz took your questions on the outcome of the 2004 election.

The transcript follows.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

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Dan Balz: Hello to everyone this afternoon. It's a rainy day here in Washington but there's lots of post-election chatter around town and around the country, and we've just had the president's first press conference since he won a second term. So there will be plenty to keep us busy. There is a wealth of information and data available on our website about this election, so I encourage you to keep plumbing it in the days ahead.

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Washington, D.C.: Hi Dan,

Isn't this talk of a mandate overblown? After all, almost all the blue states stayed blue and almost all the red states stayed red compared to 2000. And 49 percent voted for the losing candidate. Republican gains in the Senate were made in states where they should dominate, and house gains were mostly facilitated by redistricting. Democrats could very well close the gap in the Senate when Northeast republicans are up for election in the next election.

Dan Balz: The elections results certainly showed that America is stilla very divided country. With few exceptions, red and blue states performed as predicted. But President Bush accomplished some significant objectives. He won a majority of the vote, which in this divided environment is not to be taken lightly. His vote increased in many of the states, even those he lost. This is not an era in which we're going to see landslides of the kind that reelected Ronald Reagan and Lyndon Johnson. But in strengthening GOP majorities in the House and Senate and claiming a majority of the vote, Bush is in a position to claim a mandate. The more important question is how he will interpret that mandate.

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Arlington, Va.: There's been a lot of commentary about how the exit polls indicated that so many people voted on the basis of "moral values." Since the exit polls wwere shown to be so widely wrong in terms of which candidate was ahead, is there any reason to trust what those same polls say about voters' motivation?

Dan Balz: The early exit polls certainly were off in what they said about the national race, but that is not unusual. Even assuming the exit polls had more problems than in past presidential races, there is a level of confidence in the final samples and what they tell us. Given the composition of the electorate -- the same percentage of Republicans and Democrats -- and other indicators that come straight out of voting statistics, I see no reason to doubt that a healthy fraction of the population said moral values motivated them more than anything else. If you went to Bush rallies, you would have seen and heard supporters who praised him for his faith, who volunteered that they prayed for him every day and who were clearly motivated by moral and religious convictions.

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Washington, D.C.: Hello. The speculation has started: Rice, Powell, Ashcroft, Ridge; who do you expect to leave and who will leave first?

Dan Balz: Washington's obsessive parlor game is cabinetmaking and I'll happily acknowledge that I have no inside information. It has been long assumed that Powell will leave and I have no reason to doubt that. The rumor today is that Ashcroft will submit his resigation in a matter of weeks. We're checking on that. I think some folks like HHS's Tommy Thompson and Homeland Security's Tom Ridge, two ex-governors, might find that it's time to leave. We should know a lot more about this soon.

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Washington, D.C.: Mine is really a question of the future of the Democratic Party.

The DNC and Kerry did not do well this year. Their campaign strategy was off. They allowed the Republicans to plant ideas without rebuffing them (swift boat and flip-flopping come to mind). The Dems will not be able to get a good win in again until the stop, reorganize, and revamp.

Do you think they've realized this, or are they going to keep going recklessly until they lose even more? Are they going to regroup and start on a new path? Will we have to deal with red states winning for many years to come?

Dan Balz: These will be difficult months for the Democrats. Interestingly, there is, so far at least, little attempt to explain away the loss by saying it was Kerry's fault. The truth is the Kerry campaign did a good job and turned out a big vote in the areas where it counted. They ran into a GOP operation that was their equal or better in the key battlegrounds.

Democrats have never defined themselves in the post-Clinton era. Clinton moved the party to the center and dealt with some of the problems that had hampered the party in the 1980s, but no party can remain static and Democrats need to rethink where they stand on national security and on some domestic issues, and they must come to terms with an electorate divided along cultural and religious lines. Right now that divide is hurting Democrats and helping Republicans.

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Fairfax, Va: What about election fraud? There is some speculation that exit polls weren't incorrect rather electronic voting machines without paper trails were rigged.

Dan Balz: I have seen and heard this a number of times over the past two days. I have no doubt that if the Democratic team around Kerry, which includes some of te most experience and toughest political operative in the country, had evidence that would support those allegations, they would have tried to do something about them before allowing Kerry to concede.

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Clemson, S.C.: Dan,

Everyone is talking about the red/blue divide, but if you look at the results Kerry won with less margins, in almost all states, than Gore did. Does that not suggest that this "divide" is actually as not as sectional as the pundits have said?

Dan Balz: I think the country is still quite divided geographically and there is no clearer evidence than in your region. Look at what has happened to the Democrats in the South. There were five open, southern Democratic Senate seats on the ballot on Tuesday and Republicans won all five. The South is now pretty solidly Republican and that has reshaped the geography of politics.

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Timonium, Md.: Should John Kerry be the next Minority Leader of the US Senate?

Dan Balz: I'm not sure I'd wish that on John Kerry right now. I would assume that, once he decompresses, he will want to operate with more latitude than he'd be able to as minority leader. John McCain has shown how to leverage a losing bid for the presidency to enhance his power. Maybe Kerry will take some lessons from his friend McCain.

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Harrisburg, Pa.: If I understand this correctly, $600 million was spent to get voters to change their minds about politics, and the only change from the 2000 to the 2004 elections was New Hampshire went from the Republican column to the Democratic column. That probably more reflected that Kerry was the Democratic nominee and had a long time connection to New Hampshire voters than any major philosophical shift. Did any of this advertising connect to any large group of voters?

Dan Balz: If you talk to some of the strategists in the campaigns privately, they'll suggest the ads did not fundamentally change attitudes. In states like Florida and Ohio, Kerry and the Democrats had much larger advertising buys the final week, and yet they couldn't turn the tide in those states. Advertising is an expensive and necessary part of politics, but the 2004 campaign was a reminder that the parties know personal contact and getting out the vote often count as much or more.

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Preismanwaks, Wis.: Dan, many have called upon President Bush to reach across the aisle to Democrats to help the country heal. Do you think the Democrats should do the same? If not, wouldn't the one-way concessions amount to a temporing or even reversal of the election results?

Dan Balz: That's a good point and it is one the president's people point to when they are criticized for not working more cooperatively with Democrats. They argue they got no cooperation when they tried. Still, the president has more ability to set that tone than the opposition, and the chief executive can do it more effectively than a legislative branch of many independent operators. We'll see how many Democrats are willing to work with the White House in the next Congress.

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Providence, R.I.: Much has been made about this years 17 percent youth vote being the same as 2000's 17 percent, but I have not yet seen a geographical breakdown of where these people voted compared to 200, and also how they voted.

Also, don't youths in the red states tend to be Republican anyway, with exceptions being at some of the reputable universities and colleges. Are there really enough young Democrats in Ohio to tip the scales, had they been fully mobilized? Isn't a mobilized youth there likely to benefit Bush more?

Dan Balz: Let's look at their role in four battleground states. In Florida, they were 17 percent of the electorate. In Ohio, 21 percent. In Pennsylvania, 21 percent. In Wisconsin, 20 percent. In all four states, they voted strongly for Kerry. Bush won Florida and Ohio, Kerry won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Let's give credit. Younger voters were more engaged this year than they were in 2000, when so much of the campaign was about issues like Social Security and Medicare. Hopefully, these young and new voters will stay involved.

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Iowa: Bush will be a lame duck president in 18-20 months. Who do you see lining up on the Rep. side to take his place on the 2008 ticket?

Dan Balz: Washington's second hottest parlor game is 2008 speculation. For starters -- and I mean only for starters since this list could grow rapidl -- there's John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. The list could include Virginia Sen. George Allen, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, New York Gov. George Pataki, maybe Tom Ridge, maybe . . . . We could go on and on.

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Washington, D.C.: I love the chatter's idea of Kerry being Minority Leader, but it will be Reid from Nevada. Dodd (Conn.) has already said he will not challange Reid. What are the Democrats thinking? Let's pick another minority leader from a red state that could easily be picked off? It seems to me that the Democratic Party is absolutely NOT regrouping and revamping, they are just going to blindly stumble around as they have been. Get a clue and work on your base of 49 million people.

Dan Balz: Well that's right. Sen. Reid will be the new minority leader. Congressional caucuses pick leaders not to shape the future direction of their parties so much as to make sure their daily lives in the Senate or House are as good as possible. Some congressional leaders actually act as leaders of their party -- Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich are the most recent examples -- but to mixed results. The party's problems are deeper than who is the leader or deputy leader of the House or Senate and the debate will take place both inside Congress and beyond.

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Arlington, Va.: What is Edwards' future? He did not seem to connect as Kerry hoped (and spent a lot of time trying in Ohio). In retrospect, would Graham have been a better choice, making Florida competitive? Was there anyone from the Midwest that could have helped the ticket? Thanks.

Dan Balz: He has a potentially bright future but he has a problem, since he will lack a platform now that he is leaving the Senate. He did not run for reelection to the Senate in large part because he knew he would have trouble getting reelected. (Democrats lost that seat on Tuesday.) Having been the vice presidential nominee gives him standing he would have lacked, but it is not guarantee of future success. Just ask Joe Lieberman. He did not help Democrats put any southern states into play and Bush clobbered Kerry in rural and small-town areas of the battleground states where Edwards was said to have appeal. The truth is that even in the Democratic primaries Edwards did not have consistently more appeal in those areas than in other parts of the states. But he is a smart and very talented politician with a clear ability to connect with voters. He will be a force and a factor as Democrats regroup.

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Washington, D.C.: Mr. Balz,

This election saw the emergence of the so-called 527 organizations on both sides. Do you see Congress acting to eliminate what many call a loophole in past efforts at genuine campaign reform? Not sure how effective these groups were, but they sure seems to be outside the spirt of McCain-Feingold, etc.

Dan Balz: I don't know whether changes will come from Congress or the Federal Election Commission or somewhere else. Perhaps nothing will happen, but the role of 527s and their ability to raise soft money was one of the major controversies in this election and a large, leftover piece of business in campaign finance reform.

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Washington, D.C.: Dan, the traditional wisdom has always been that if the 'liberals' could get out the vote, they would have an edge. That apparently didn't happen, despite a turnout that was as large as could be expected. What's happened?

Dan Balz: It didn't happen because the Republicans turned out their voters. This caught people by surprise but the Bush campaign said for months they were building the most effective ground game they had ever put together. It was carefully planned, very sophisticated, well managed and in the end extremely effective. Democrats thought they could win Ohio on the strength of their ground game but one Kerry staffer admitted Wednesday that the Republicans had kicked their backsides in the ground war.

By the way, this is one of the more encouraging aspects of this campaign, a return to shoe-leather and personal contact by the campaigns after so much emphasis on television ads and the so-called air war.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Dan, do you think we would have seen a different outcome in the Electoral College had Kerry picked Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt? That choice might have delivered the critical states of Missouri and Iowa to President Bush. Also, when will the Democrats learn (see McGovern 1972, Mondale 1984, Dukakis 1988 and now Kerry) that the South is not going to back a northern liberal for president?

Dan Balz: An interesting question. There was some talk during the Kerry vice presidential selection process that Edwards actually had more statewide appeal in Missouri than Gephardt. I never saw such a poll so I can't vouch for it. Organized labor put a real effort into Missouri and would have had more incentive with their friend Dick Gephardt on the ballot with Kerry. But in the end vice presidential candidates don't usually make that much difference. The last one to do so was Lyndon Johnson in 1960.

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Takoma Park, Md.: You say "I think the country is still quite divided geographically", this post-election USA-Today map tends to argue that point

Can you explaint that? It seems even in states that were blue, there are many red districts -- except the city areas.

Dan Balz: Red and blue divisions are both valid and an oversimplification of political life in America right now, a point my son makes every time he and I talk about this subject. But regions long have differed politically: the South more conservative than the Northeast for example. What has happened is that the parties have become more homogenous, making some of these differences more significant in terms of elections. Conservative southern Democrats of 40 years ago are Republicans today. Moderate to liberal northern Republicans are now mostly Democratic. Within states, big city v rural splits continue, but the political character of the suburbs has changed. There's agreement broadly on certain things: tolerance and diverty are more widely accepted than ever. But other divisions are as sharp as ever. In general, the more you get outside cities these days, the more you get into red territory. Red districts cover far more geography, but because many of those are sparsely populated counties, the Democrats and Republicans remain close to parity.

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Anonymous: Al Gore in 2008?

Dan Balz: Doubtful. He said in a brilliant New Yorker profile earlier this fall that he fully expects not to run, though he was honest enough to say the you never quite get rid of the bug.

And on that note, we'll stop. Thanks to everyone who sent in a question and I'm sorry we couldn't get to all of them. Follow up with my colleagues as we keep this discussion going.

Thanks again.
Dan Balz

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