[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Voters Are Very Settled, Intense and Partisan, and It' s Only July

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Voters Are Very Settled, Intense and Partisan, and It's Only July

July 25, 2004
 By ROBIN TONER 



 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Clif Kelley, a retired economist, stood in
the leafy backyard of his suburban home one recent evening
and summoned his Democratic neighbors, 62 of whom were
arrayed before him, to the political barricades. 

"We firmly believe that another four years of Bush in the
White House will do incredible damage to this country,"
declared Mr. Kelley, 87, imploring his neighbors to get
involved, knock on doors, make sure their precinct (which
went to President Bush by six votes four years ago) goes
for Senator John Kerry this time around. 

"I am one of those World War II veterans who are dying off
at a rapid pace, and I can't stand the thought of dying
under a Bush administration." 

That same intensity was palpable the following day, in
Beckley, W.Va., where thousands of people like Jim
Farnsworth, a 32-year-old telephone technician holding his
1-month-old son, turned out for a rally with Mr. Bush.
"Voted for him last time, will vote for him again, would
even vote for him a third term if he would run," Mr.
Farnsworth said. "I like the convictions that he stands on.
Abortion, family." 

His wife, Tina, chimed in, "His belief in God." Behind
them, as far as the eye could see, snaked a line of
like-minded voters, patiently waiting for hours in the
scorching sun to see their president. 

This is not the typical July of a presidential election
year. 

Rarely has a presidential campaign been this intense, this
polarized, this partisan, this early. The conventions
historically begin the general election season, ending a
lull after the primary season has wound down. But for
months now, the general election battle has been fully
joined. 

Crowds are bigger than normal for this time of year,
campaign veterans say, and money has poured in at an
astonishing rate. Voters sometimes seem on the verge of
tears as they reach for their candidate's hand on the rope
line. They wait in the rain, they line up for hours to go
through the metal detectors and the increasingly elaborate
security, they cheer every biting partisan line. 

The idea of a red America and a blue America, Republican
and Democratic, two countries separated by a yawning
cultural divide, has become a cliché, dismissed by many
experts as overdrawn. The electorate, taken as a whole, is
no more divided over hot-button issues like abortion than
it was in years past, those experts arue; a large middle
ground still exists on many other issues, like the need for
more affordable health care. 

But the increasing partisanship of the 1980's and 1990's
has left its mark on politics, culminating in the intensity
of this campaign. Most voters have already chosen sides -
sometimes angrily, often passionately. The swing voter and
the independent, once thought to be the models of the
modern voter, are harder to find this year, according to
pollsters in both parties. 

One telling measure: 79 percent surveyed in the most recent
New York Times/CBS News poll said their minds had been made
up about whom to vote for in November; 64 percent felt that
way in July 2000. Similarly, the Pew Research Center for
the People and the Press found that one in five voters this
summer were "persuadable," compared with one in three at
this stage in past campaigns. 

The trend has been building for a long time, many analysts
say. Gary C. Jacobson, a political scientist at the
University of California, San Diego, said, "Over the past
30 years, after a long period of decline, partisanship has
been increasing, in the proportion of people who identify
with parties and who act on the basis of that
identification." 

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said
that what has changed among voters is not their loyalty to
party, per se, but the size of the gap between what
Democrats and Republicans think and believe - on the social
safety net, the role of government, the image of business. 

In fact, the ideological lines between the parties have
grown sharper, with Democrats more likely to be liberal,
Republicans conservative. It was a gradual, but ultimately
striking change: 25 years ago, more Democratic voters
described themselves as conservatives than as liberals,
according to polls by The Times and CBS News. In the same
period, Republican voters calling themselves liberals fell
from 15 percent to 8 percent. Today, conservative Democrats
and liberal Republicans are a dwindling breed. 

The Southern conservative wing of the Democratic Party, for
generations a power in the region and on Capitol Hill, is
now much diminished. Twenty-nine percent of white Southern
male voters said they were Republicans in 1972; 49 percent
in 2000, according to surveys of voters leaving polling
places. 

Similarly, white evangelical Protestants were evenly
divided between the Democratic and Republican Parties in
1987-1988, according to the Pew survey; by 2003, nearly
twice as many were Republicans as Democrats. 

The voters have "sorted themselves out," as many experts
put it, and found their ideological home. Frank McQuillen,
a machinist in Beckley, for example, said he was a
registered Democrat until this year, but had not voted for
a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976. 

"I love George Bush," Mr. McQuillen said. "He's got the
same convictions and principles that I have on a lot of
things. Course, I don't agree with everything he stands
for, but most of the important things I do." 

Mr. McQuillen, wearing a sticker that declared he was a
"Friend of Coal," added of Mr. Bush, "He's against big
government, he's against abortion, he's against gay
marriage." 

Nowhere are the partisan divisions sharper than in the
voters' views of President Bush. Eighty-four percent of the
Republicans approve of the job he is doing, but just 16
percent of the Democrats do, according to the latest
Times/CBS News poll. 

The partisan gap in presidents' approval ratings soared
with Ronald Reagan's re-election year and remained high
with his successors, according to data from the Gallup
Poll, which has tracked the subject for 56 years. But it
has intensified with Mr. Bush. 

Matthew Dowd, chief pollster and strategist for the Bush
campaign, described the president's partisan approval
rating as part of a trend that is many years in the making.
"It's a reflection of the parity of the parties and where
things stand in this country," Mr. Dowd argued. 

Ralph Reed, another top Bush campaign adviser, said, "The
divisions within the electorate are reflective not of the
leadership style of the president but of deeper fault lines
running through the country as a whole." 

But Democrats, like Representative Rahm Emanuel of
Illinois, counter that Mr. Bush has heightened those
divisions, run a fiercely partisan presidency, and abused
the trust accorded him after the attacks on Sept. 11. "He
basically had carte blanche for a year, and he spent it,"
Mr. Emanuel said. 

The war with Iraq and the disputed circumstances of Mr.
Bush's taking office have heightened the animosity among
Democrats, many analysts say. Seventy-six percent of the
Democrats in the most recent Times/CBS News poll said Mr.
Bush was not the legitimate winner of the 2000 election. 

When asked how she voted four years ago, Mary Jo Marraffa,
a chiropractor at Mr. Kelley's backyard gathering in
Columbus, replied: "I voted for the president who really
won, but didn't get in. That one." 

Martha Bowling, an elementary school counselor also at the
party, is the mother of two marines - a son and a daughter
- deployed in Iraq. "I don't resent them being gone," she
said. "I am afraid to have a commander in chief whom I
don't trust." 

Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House
Democratic whip, said, "There is a hardened feeling on both
sides." 

Former Senator Warren B. Rudman, the New Hampshire
Republican, said that after a lifetime in politics, "I
don't recall the hatred - not just dislike and
disagreement, but hatred - that a lot of Republicans had
for Clinton and a lot of Democrats now have for President
Bush." 

Mr. Rudman and many other political veterans note that
these passions are expertly stoked by the consultant-driven
politics of the modern era. That is, perhaps, especially
true this year, when many consultants believe the election
will turn on which side best energizes and turns out its
core constituents. 

More fuel for the partisan fires comes from a simple fact:
Rarely have the stakes been higher in terms of sheer power.


The Reagan era was an ideological time, many politicians
noted, but each party had its stronghold and government was
neatly divided. Republicans had the White House and, for
six years, the Senate. Democrats seemed secure in the House
and in statehouses around the country. 

Now, Republicans have sweeping power - both houses of
Congress, the White House and the potential of naming as
many as three seats on the Supreme Court over the next four
years. But their power is held by the narrowest of margins.


"We're living through a natural period of really intense
struggle for power," said Newt Gingrich, the former speaker
of the House and a man widely credited with (or blamed for)
bringing a new ideological edge to the chamber. "Until one
side or the other succeeds, it will continue to be a
slugging match because so much is at stake." 

And voters on both sides seem to understand. Four years
ago, only 45 percent of Americans said it "really matters"
who wins the election; this year, 63 percent said so,
according to the Pew Research Center. Democrats and
independents particularly thought this was true. 

Pat Kelley, Clif Kelley's wife, defined the stakes of a
second Bush term this way: "I don't like his policies on
the environment, and his policies on the Supreme Court just
scare me to death. I see Scalia as taking over from
Rehnquist.'' 

She added, "And he started this war with no reason." 

The
Kelleys said they felt they had to act. "We've never been
involved like this before, in an election," Ms. Kelley
said. "But this time it's serious. This is the most serious
election in 70 years, I think." 

Jennifer Walker, a former schoolteacher and stay-at-home
mother of two from Nitro, W.Va., was no less serious as she
outlined her case for Mr. Bush. 

"I don't want to give the wrong impression, that he's all
about the war," she said. "I think he would prefer peace.
But it's not a perfect world. There are terrorists and
hurtful regimes and sometimes you have to go to war. And
once you start a war, you have to finish it. And I'm not
sure that would happen if Kerry was elected." 

For all the differences between Democrats and Republicans,
there is also common ground. Big majorities in both
parties, for example, believe major changes are needed in
the health care system, according to the most recent
Times/CBS News poll. On abortion, many voters take a far
more nuanced position than the leaders of their parties. 

Morris P. Fiorina, a political scientist at Stanford and
one of the authors of "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized
America,'' says voters are far less divided than are their
elected officials and party activists. 

Still, as Mr. Kohut put it, "It is a very contentious
year.'' And some elected officials are already looking
ahead and worrying that the transition to governing will be
that much harder for it. 

Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine,
said, "At the end of the day you have to coalesce around
some consensus solutions.'' 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/politics/campaign/25VOTE.html?ex=1091777012&ei=1&en=dd083d221706e8cd


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