ELECTION 2000: A CASE STUDY

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1 scheduled. (See Table 11-8.) This separation of gubernatorial and presidential races may help candidates of the party that is out of power nationally. * for more information about the gubernatorial issues, see: ELECTION 2000: A CASE STUDY In the extraordinarily close, disputed election of 2000 the Republican nominee, Texas Governor George W. Bush, defeated Vice President Al Gore, his Democratic opponent. Bush s victory came after a tumultuous and divisive post-election legal and political struggle to determine who won Florida s 25 electoral votes and, with them, the presidency. Bush carried 30 of the 50 states and won 271 electoral votes to 266 for Al Gore. But for many suspenseful days that stretched into weeks, the nation and the world did not know who would be the next president of the United States. The outcome marked the return of the Republican Party to power in the White House after eight years of Democratic rule. The results were: Popular Electoral Vote * Vote Percentage George W. Bush (R) 50,456, % Al Gore (D) 50,996, % Ralph Nader (Green) 2,831, % Pat Buchanan (Reform) 447, % Others 595, % Totals 105,326, % * Totals as of December 22, 2000, The Associated Press. The Democrats As the Democrats awaited the presidential year of 2000, they realized that four factors could have a powerful effect on their party s prospects. First, who would the Democrats nominate for president? Under the Twenty-second Amendment, President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was barred from running for a third term. It was almost universally assumed that his vice president, Al Gore, would seek the presidency; but would other Democrats give Gore a fight for the nomination? Second, how popular or unpopular would the Clinton administration be in 2000? The greater the president s approval rating in the polls, it was assumed, the better the chances might be that another Democrat could be elected to succeed him. * In 1942 only 10 states with four-year gubernatorial terms scheduled their election for governor midway through the president s term. By 1962 the number of such states stood at 20; for 1990 it was 34. Adapted from Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, May 1969), pp ; and Congressional Quarterly, Weekly Reports. November 8, 2000: The Indianapolis Star got it right. Third, how would the American economy be performing by the summer and fall of 2000? If the bouyant economy continued to do well (see Table 11-9), the chances of a Democratic victory would be increased. But if the economy began to falter, the Democrats would lose what they hoped would be one of their strongest campaign assets. Finally, would the Democratic cause be hurt by the third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader, running again on TABLE 11-9 Annual Rates of Inflation and Unemployment in the United States, Inflation Unemployment % 7.1% % 7.6% % 9.7% % 9.6% % 7.4% % 7.1% % 6.9% % 6.1% % 5.5% % 5.3% % 5.6% % 6.8% % 7.5% % 6.9% % 6.1% % 5.6% % 5.4% % 4.9% % 4.5% % 4.2% 2000 * 3.4% 4.0% * 2000 figures are averaged for the first 10 months of the year. SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 342 CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

2 Vice President Al Gore on the campaign trail in Atlanta during the 2000 presidential race. the Green Party ticket? In 1996, Nader had run in some states and had polled 685,000 votes many of them, it was believed, votes that otherwise would have gone to the Democratic presidential ticket. In a close presidential contest in 2000, Democrats reasoned, a new and more vigorous candidacy by Ralph Nader might hurt their party severely. As expected, Vice President Al Gore announced in June 1999 that he would seek the Democratic nomination. Several other prominent Democrats considered challenging Gore for the nomination including Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, and Congressman Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the Democratic minority leader in the House of Representatives. But in the end, they decided not to run for president in The one prominent Democrat who did challenge Gore was Bill Bradley, a former senator from New Jersey and onetime professional basketball star, who had served for 18 years in the Senate. At first, Bradley concentrated much of his campaigning in New Hampshire, a state that, as usual, was scheduled to hold the nation s first presidential primary, on February 1, By the beginning of September 1999, public opinion polls suggested that Bradley was running even with the vice president in New Hampshire; and many Democrats felt that the Gore campaign was faltering. On September 29, Gore announced a sweeping restructuring of his campaign staff. He also declared that his campaign headquarters would be moving from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, Tennessee, in his home state. 39 In December, Bradley announced that he would also make a major effort to win the Democratic caucuses in Iowa. On January 24, Gore scored a decisive victory in Iowa, winning the Democratic caucuses by a margin of 2 to 1. Eight days later, Gore won a fiercely contested and narrow victory over Bradley in New Hampshire, by 76,527 votes to 70,295. After those twin defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, much of the energy seemed to go out of the Bradley campaign. Five weeks later, on Super Tuesday, March 7, 2000, when Democratic primaries were held in 13 states, Gore won them all. Two days later, on March 9, Bradley announced that he was suspending his campaign. The race for the Democratic nomination was over. 40 The Republicans In June 1999, nearly a year and a half before the 2000 election, George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and the son of former President George Bush, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination. That same month, Senator John McCain of Arizona also declared that he was a candidate. Senator McCain had been a military hero during the Vietnam War; he survived for five and a half years in North Vietnamese prisons after his plane had been shot down. He had also become well known as the cosponsor of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. But Governor Bush quickly emerged as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. By December 1999, he had amassed a record-setting $67 million in campaign funds and had won early endorsements from a large number of Republican members of Congress, governors, and conservative leaders. 41 In fact, Bush s early political strength and the enormous amount of money that had poured in to his campaign forced close to half of the potential Republican field out of the race well before the primaries began. Those who announced they would not seek the Republican nomination, or who ended their campaigns early, included former Vice President Dan Quayle; Elizabeth Dole, a former cabinet member and head of the Red Cross; Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio; and former Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. 42 By the end of 1999, just five candidates remained in the race besides Governor Bush: Senator McCain; Steve Forbes, a multimillionaire publisher; Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah; Alan Keyes, a former State Department official; and Gary Bauer, the former head of Election 2000: A Case Study 343

3 Texas Governor George W. Bush looking for votes on a college campus in Charleston, South Carolina in the Family Research Council and, like Keyes, an articulate conservative. Senator McCain announced that he would not campaign actively in Iowa. Instead, he concentrated his energies in New Hampshire, criss-crossing the state in a bus labeled The Straight Talk Express, and appearing at more than 100 town meetings. When the voters of New Hampshire went to the polls on February 1, they gave John McCain a stunning victory over Bush. McCain defeated the Texas governor by 19 percentage points. 43 McCain s victory in New Hampshire was followed by an upswing of support for the Arizona senator in other states. But it was also clear that the Bush supporters were better organized and better financed than McCain s in many parts of the country. Bush won the crucial South Carolina primary on February 19 the first Republican primary in the South. And on Super Tuesday, March 7, although McCain won in four more New England states, Bush was the winner in eight states, including three states Ohio, New York, and California that would send large delegations to the Republican convention. Two days after Super Tuesday, Senator McCain announced: I am no longer an active candidate for my party s nomination for president. The battle for the Republican nomination, like the Democratic contest, was effectively over. 44 April to July 2000, and the Republican and Democratic Conventions In the relatively quiet period after April, each party prepared for its national convention. Throughout these months, to the distress of Democratic partisans, Bush generally ran ahead of Gore in the public opinion polls. Bush led by 6 percentage points in the Gallup poll at the end of April, and in late July his lead was even greater. (See Table ) On July 25, Bush announced that his choice for his vice presidential running mate was Dick Cheney, a former member of Congress with extensive experience in Washington who had served on the White House staff and in the cabinet. The harmonious Republican National Convention in Philadelphia (July 31 August 3) was a great success for the GOP. The party s leading supporters among minority groups, including General Colin Powell, were prominently featured; and the four days were capped by a strong performance by Bush himself in his acceptance speech. When the Republican convention was over, Bush led Gore in the polls by 54 to 37 percent. (See Table ) The Democrats now made plans to launch a counterattack, at their own convention in Los Angeles on August But as the Democrats began to gather on the West Coast that month, they faced a major strategic problem. Democrats realized that their candidate, Al Gore, would have to overcome a special challenge in the fall campaign. Gore had been President Clinton s handpicked choice for vice president, and had served in the Clinton administration for eight years. Despite Clinton s impeachment in 1998 and his much publicized relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton s job approval ratings in the polls remained high unusually high for an American president nearing the end of his second term. (See Table ) But when prospective voters were asked whether they approved of President Clinton s personal behavior, they said they disapproved by a margin of 2 to 1. * There were both pluses and minuses for Gore in being closely associated with Clinton. As the opening day of the Democratic National Convention approached, Vice President Gore sought to distance himself from Clinton. In a dramatic move, * On November 4 7, 1999, when a national sample of the U.S. public was polled, 28 percent of those interviewed said that they approved of President Clinton s personal behavior, and 61 percent disapproved. A similar poll taken October 17 18, 2000, found that 30 percent approved of Clinton s personal behavior, and 60 percent disapproved. See Voter.com, online at < 344 CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

4 Gore chose Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut as his vice presidential running mate. Lieberman had been the most prominent Democrat to speak out and criticize Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, declaring on the Senate floor: Such behavior is not just inappropriate, it is immoral. 45 Lieberman was also the first Jewish candidate to be selected for a major-party presidential ticket. Then, on the final night of the convention, in a further attempt to establish his own independent identity, Gore told the cheering delegates gathered in the Staples Center in Los Angeles: I stand here tonight as my own man. It was the high point of a convention that had begun three days earlier with a farewell address by President Clinton. Later, the delegates also heard a speech by Caroline Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy s only surviving child. Just as the Republicans had two weeks earlier, the Democrats seemed to get a convention bounce in the polls from the viewers response to the televised convention proceedings. The first Gallup poll taken after the Democratic convention reported that Gore was now 1 percentage point ahead of Bush; allowing for sampling error, the race was a toss-up. And two weeks after that, following the Labor Day weekend, the traditional starting point for a fall general election campaign, the Gallup poll reported that Gore still held a modest lead over Bush. (See Table ) Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan As Bush and Gore prepared to do battle in the autumn of 2000, two other presidential candidacies attracted intense interest and attention among campaign strategists. One was Pat Buchanan, a conservative commentator and former aide to President Nixon, who emerged as the new standard-bearer of the Reform Party that Ross Perot had led in The other was consumer advocate Ralph Nader, the candidate of the Green Party. In April, Buchanan was drawing 4 percent of the total vote in the Gallup poll, the same percentage as TABLE Voter Support for Bush, Gore, Nader, and Buchanan: The Gallup Poll s Four-Way Trial Heats between April and Election Eve, 2000 For Others; Date of Interviews For Bush For Gore For Nader For Buchanan Don t know April 28 30, % 41% 4% 4% 4% June 6 7, % 41% 6% 2% 5% July 25 26, % 39% 4% 1% 6% Republican National Convention (July 31 August 3) August 4 5, % 37% 4% 1% 4% August 11 12, % 39% 2% 1% 3% Democratic National Convention (August 14 17) August 18 19, % 47% 3% 2% 2% September 5 7, % 46% 3% 1% 7% Debate over the Debates (first half of September) September 18 20, % 51% 3% 1% 4% October 1 3, % 49% 2% 1% 7% First Presidential Debate (October 3) October 5 7, % 41% 4% 1% 5% October 8 10, % 45% 2% 1% 7% Second presidential debate (October 11) October 13 15, % 44% 3% 1% 5% Third presidential debate (October 17) October 18 20, % 40% 4% 1% 4% October 22 24, % 43% 3% 1% 5% November 1 3, % 43% 5% 0% 5% November 5 6, % 45% 4% 1% 3% Election Results 00% 00% 00% 0% 0% SOURCE: Data provided by the Gallup poll. Election 2000: A Case Study 345

5 TABLE President Clinton s Job Rating, * Date of Interviews Approve Disapprove No Opinion Clinton reelected with 49% of the vote (November 1996) Clinton s second inauguration (January 1997) November 21 24, % 35% 7% January 30 February 2, % 31% 9% November 21 23, % 30% 9% Monica Lewinsky scandal becomes public; Clinton denies having had sexual relations with Lewinsky (January 1998) February 13 15, % 30% 4% July 7 8, % 34% 5% Clinton addresses the American people; reports that he did have a relationship with Lewinsky that was inappropriate (August 1998) September 11 12, % 34% 3% Kenneth Starr, independent counsel, submits report to Congress with details of the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship; report asserts that Clinton had obstructed justice (September 1998) October 9 12, % 32% 3% Midterm congressional elections; Democrats gain seats in House, and do not lose strength in the Senate (November 3, 1998) November 13 15, % 31% 3% House votes to impeach President Clinton (December 19, 1998) December 19 20, % 25% 2% Trial of Clinton begins in the Senate (January 1999) January 22 24, % 29% 2% February 9, % 27% 3% Senate votes not to convict Clinton (February 12, 1999) February 19 21, % 30% 4% July 13 14, % 37% 4% January 17 19, % 35% 7% Clinton s final State of the Union address (January 2000) February 4 6, % 33% 4% May 5 7, % 36% 7% Republican National Convention (July 2000) Democratic National Convention (August 2000) August 29 September 5, % 35% 3% October 6 9, % 37% 5% * Responses to the question: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job as president? SOURCE: Data provided by the Gallup poll. Nader had. (See Table ) Many observers assumed that a large numer of those Buchanan votes might go to Bush, if Buchanan were not on the ballot. But Buchanan was forced to suspend active campaigning for a time while he underwent major surgery. And after midsummer, virtually every national poll reported his voter support at 1 percent or less. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Buchanan candidacy was that it was Buchanan not Perot who was running on the Reform Party ticket in Perot had received nearly 8 million votes when he ran for president in Although Perot was not on the ballot in the year 2000, the election outcome might be greatly influenced by the votes of those former Perot supporters. In contrast to the fading electoral appeal of Pat Buchanan, voter support for Ralph Nader was more persistent. In the Gallup polls it peaked at 6 percent in early June and still stood at 4 or 5 percent in the final 346 CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

6 Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, campaigning for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000 two pre-election polls. (See Table ) It was widely assumed that Nader cut into Gore s voter support more than Bush s; and during the closing weeks of the campaign Gore spent considerable time trying to persuade prospective Nader voters to switch their support to the Democratic presidential ticket. The General Election Campaign As the Labor Day weekend came to a close, there were just 9 weeks remaining until Election Day. As it turned out, those 9 weeks seemed to break almost evenly into three distinct phases. The first three weeks were dominated by a debate over the debates, as the Bush campaign and the Gore campaign argued over the character and the timing of the proposed presidential and vice presidential televised debates. During the next three weeks, attention focused on the debates themselves and on the voters response to what they saw and heard. The final three weeks were a sprint to the finish, as both candidates campaigned frantically to motivate their own supporters to turn out and vote. Both Bush and Gore concentrated their efforts on states where the race was close. Going into the fall campaign, Gore had had more experience than Bush in high-pressure nationally televised debates. Some observers therefore assumed that Gore would perform better than Bush in a series of formal debates on television. The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, a group that had conducted debates in previous presidential elections, proposed that there should be four debates from October 3 to October 17 three between the two major-party presidential candidates, and one featuring the two candidates for vice president. Nader and Buchanan, to their great distress, were excluded by the commission from the presidential debates. Vice President Gore said that he was prepared to participate in all of the presidential debates proposed by the commission. Governor Bush, however, was initially reluctant to agree to the commission plan. His representatives argued instead for different, more informal formats, suggesting one debate moderated by NBC s Tim Russert, and another with CNN s Larry King. 46 As the controversial debate over the debates dragged on during the first part of September, Democrats began to charge that Bush was afraid to debate Gore. In the end Bush agreed to participate in three debates on the dates the commission had originally proposed October 3, 11, and 17. The Bush camp also agreed to a vice presidential debate on October 5. In one of the first Gallup polls taken after the debate controversy ended, covering the period September 18 20, Gore had opened up a sizable lead over Bush. Gore now led the Texas governor by 10 percentage points. (See Table ) The first debate between Bush and Gore took place in Boston on October 3, with an estimated television audience of 50 million viewers. 47 The two candidates seemed to battle fairly evenly as they discussed the issues; but many viewers disliked Gore s debating style. 48 Some criticized him for interrupting and being too aggressive, and others felt he did not show proper respect for his opponent, sometimes sighing audibly at Bush s remarks. The Gallup poll taken in a three-day period shortly after the first debate suggested that the relative strength of the two candidates in the electorate had been reversed. Bush now led Gore by 8 percentage points. In addition, voter support for the man who wasn t there in the debate, Ralph Nader, had doubled. (See Table ) In the days that followed, it was clear that the Republicans were heartened by their candidate s showing in the first debate, and that Gore was startled and shaken by the public response to his debate performance. In the Election 2000: A Case Study 347

7 And now with a rebuttal... Copyright The New Yorker Collection Richter 1979 from cartoonbank.com. All rights reserved. second debate, held at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on October 11, a subdued Gore changed his debate tactics and attempted to be conciliatory, saying six times of Bush s comments, I agree. Many observers regarded Gore s performance in the second debate as weak, and a national post-debate poll reported that 47 percent of those interviewed felt Bush had won the debate. Only 31 percent said that Gore had won. 49 The third and final presidential debate was held in St. Louis on October 17, amid somber and dramatic circumstances. Missouri s popular Democratic Governor Mel Carnahan, who was his party s candidate for the U.S. Senate, had been killed in a plane crash the previous evening. There was some discussion of canceling the debate, but in the end the decision was made to proceed and to begin the evening with a tribute to Carnahan. Many observers felt that Gore s performance was better in this third debate than it had been in the first two; but the Gallup tracking polls taken during the three days that followed suggested that Bush still held the lead. He was now running ahead of Gore by 11 points. (See Table ) If Gore had won the debate over the debates in September, it seemed clear that overall, Bush had won the debates themselves in October. In the final three weeks before Election Day, both campaigns appeared to adjust and readjust their schedules several times in response to the rapidly changing dynamics of the race. Governor Bush made several visits to Oregon and Washington, states once assumed to be safely in Gore s column but where a large expected vote for Nader had now tightened the race. Gore spent considerable time in a cluster of closely contested states, pleading with potential Nader voters not to waste their vote and arguing that a vote for Nader was in effect a vote for Bush. Nader continued to campaign actively, hoping to win at least 5 percent of the total vote so that the Green Party would qualify for federal campaign funds in the next presidential election in And both major parties concentrated on GOTV drives, efforts to get out the vote of their core supporters. In the final two days before the balloting, both Gore and Bush spent much of their time campaigning in Florida, a state that both parties regarded as crucial. Most of the national polls still had Bush slightly ahead of Gore. Those same polls suggested, however, that Gore had narrowed the gap during the final days of the campaign. Politicians often believe that bad weather can discourage voters from going to the polls. On Election Day 2000, it was sunny or partly sunny along much of the East Coast from Baltimore to Boston. The afternoon high temperatures reached into the 60s as far north as the southern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. There were showers, however, around the Great Lakes and in much of the South, and more severe weather in the Plains States and part of the Rocky Mountains. On the West Coast, the weather was generally favorable. By midday, there were reports of heavy turnouts in some of the states where the race was thought to be closest; and, for only the second time in the nation s history, more than 100 million Americans were going to the polls. As the American people sat down before their television sets that evening to watch their votes be counted, it is doubtful that many of them were prepared for the tumultuous events that followed. Beginning at 7:47 P.M. EST, the major television networks declared that Gore had carried the crucial state of Florida, with 25 electoral votes. Soon afterward, Michigan and Pennsylvania, two closely watched states with sizable electoral votes, were also called for Gore. It began to look as though Gore would win. Then, at 9:54 P.M., the television networks started to retract their previous award of Florida to Gore. The Sunshine State, they now said, was too close to call. And Bush was winning several states that the Democrats had hoped to carry, including New Hampshire, Missouri, 348 CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

8 West Virginia, Arkansas, and, most startling of all, Vice President Gore s home state of Tennessee. 50 At 2:18 A.M., EST, on Wednesday, the networks declared that Bush had won Florida after all, which now made Bush the next president of the United States. 51 Several newspapers around the country rushed out with headlines declaring Bush the victor. Gore telephoned Bush from Nashville to concede the election, and congratulated the Texas governor on his victory. But soon after, as Gore was on his way by motorcade to make a concession speech to his supporters, his aides learned that Bush s lead in Florida was dwindling fast. At 3:30 A.M. EST, Gore telephoned Bush and in a second, tense conversation he retracted his concession. At 4:04 A.M. the networks reported that Florida had swung back into the undecided column. 52 The long wait for a definitive result in Florida had begun. By Wednesday, November 8, county elections supervisors in Florida began to recount the votes, as required by state law in a close election. Meanwhile, large numbers of Republican and Democratic lawyers descended on the Sunshine State. They were led by two former American secretaries of state James A. Baker for the Bush campaign, and Warren Christopher for Gore. As the recount proceeded, Bush s initial lead of 1,700 votes over Gore began to shrink. There was immediate controversy over the form of the ballot used in some precincts in Palm Beach County. Democrats argued that the butterfly layout of the ballot with the names of the presidential candidates on both the left and right sides was not only confusing but also potentially illegal according to Florida law, and that it caused hundreds of citizens who wished to vote for Gore to punch the hole next to Buchanan s name instead. Buchanan himself agreed that many of the votes that he had received in the county had been intended for Gore. Republicans, however, pointed out that the ballot had been designed and approved by a Democratic Party official. But the major controversy between the two parties centered on a tiny piece of paper known as a chad. As Americans soon learned, a chad was the bit of paper that normally fell out when a ballot was punched by the voter with a stylus. Sometimes, however, voters failed to punch the ballot all the way through. A tiny dangling piece of paper a hanging chad may remain and can fall back to fill the hole in the card. Or a weak punch of the ballot may leave only an indentation, known as a dimpled chad. Voting machines read such ballots as not having cast any vote. Democrats argued that they had lost a substantial number of votes intended for Gore. They demanded a hand recount of the ballots in four largely Democratic counties, in order to identify those votes. On Saturday, November 11, election officials began a slow hand count in some precincts in South Florida. That same day, the Bush campaign filed suit in a federal district court to try to block the manual recounts. They argued that a manual recount is open to human error and subjective judgments that are not present in a machine count. Two days later, however, the federal court ruled against the Republicans. Bush now led by about 300 votes in the unofficial tally; but, for the moment at least, the manual recount would proceed. There was additional uncertainty in both camps about the impact of absentee ballots from overseas, many from military personnel, which were to be counted by midnight Friday, November 17. On Wednesday, November 15, the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, a Republican and co-chair of The morning after: Headlines on four editions of the Chicago Sun-Times on November 8, 2000, reflect the confused result of the election. Election 2000: A Case Study 349

9 THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, 2000 GORE: Under my plan all seniors will get prescription drugs under Medicare.... Under the Medicare prescription drug proposal I m making, you go to your own doctor. Your doctor chooses your prescription.... Then you go to your own pharmacy. You fill the prescription and Medicare pays half the cost. If you re in a very poor family or high costs, Medicare will pay all the costs.... Here is the contrast: 95 percent of all seniors would get no help whatsoever under my opponent s plan for the first four or five years. BUSH: I guess my answer to that is the man is running on Mediscare. It s not what I think and it s not my intentions and not my plan. I want all seniors to have prescription drugs in Medicare. We need to reform Medicare. This administration has failed to do it.... The system today has meant a lot for a lot of seniors.... If you re happy with the system you can stay in it.... We need to have a modern system to help seniors and the idea of supporting a federally controlled... government bureaucracy of being a compassionate way for seniors... is not my vision.... You ve had your chance, vice president, you ve been there for eight years and nothing has been done.... GORE: Under my plan I will put Medicare in an iron clad lock box and prevent the money from being used for anything other than Medicare. The governor has declined to endorse that idea even though the Republican as well as Democratic leaders in congress have endorsed it. I would be interested to see if he would say this evening he ll put Medicaid in a lock box. One hundred billion dollars comes out of Medicare just for the wealthy 1 percent in the tax cut.... BUSH: This is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I m beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It s fuzzy math. It s a scaring trying to scare people in the voting booth. Under my tax plan that he continues to criticize, I set one-third. The federal government should take no more than a third of anybody s check.... GORE: When I was a young man I volunteered for the army. I served my country in Vietnam.... I served for eight years in the House of Representatives and I served on the intelligence committee, specialized in looking at arms control. I served for eight years in the United States Senate and served on the armed services committee. For the last eight years I ve served on the National Security Council.... BUSH: I think you have to look at how one has handled responsibility in office.... It s the same in domestic policy as well. Do you have the capacity to convince people to follow? Whether one makes decisions based on sound principles or whether or not you rely upon polls or focus groups on how to decide what the course of action is. We have too much polling and focus groups going on today.... I ve been the governor of a big state. I think one of the hallmarks of my relationship in Austin, Texas, is that I ve had the capacity to work with both Republicans and Democrats. I think that s an important part of leadership.... Excerpts from the first televised debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush, October 3, 2000 George W. Bush and Al Gore during their second televised debate, October 11, CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

10 GORE: I think that we should move step-by-step toward universal health coverage, but I am not in favor of government doing it all. We ve spent 65 years now on the development of a hybrid system, partly private, partly public, and 85 percent of our people have health insurance, 15 percent don t. That adds up to 44 million people. That is a national outrage. We have got to get health coverage for those who do not have it and we ve got to improve the quality for those who do with a patient s bill of rights that s real and that works.... We have got to deal with long-term care.... Now, we have a big difference on this. And you need to know the record here. Under Governor Bush, Texas has sunk to be 50th out of 50 in health care in health insurance for their citizens. BUSH: I m absolutely opposed to a national health care plan. I don t want the federal government making decisions for consumers or for providers. I remember what the administration tried to do in They tried to have a national health care plan. And fortunately, it failed. I trust people, I don t trust the federal government. It s going to be one of the themes you hear tonight. I don t want the federal government making decisions on behalf of everybody. There is an issue with the uninsured, there sure is. And we have uninsured people in my state. Ours is a big state, a fast-growing state.... But we re providing health care for our people.... They ve been talking about it in Washington, D.C. The number of uninsured has now gone up for the past seven years.... So health care needs to be affordable and available. We have to trust people to make decisions with their lives.... MODERATOR: Vice President Gore, is the governor right when he says that you re proposing the largest federal spending in years? GORE: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I m so glad that I have the chance to knock that down. Look, the problem is that under Governor Bush s plan, $1.6 trillion tax cut, mostly to the wealthy, under his own budget numbers, he proposes spending more money for a tax cut just for the wealthiest 1 percent than all the new money he budgets for education, health care, and national defense combined.... BUSH: This [Gore] is a big spender.... It s part of his record. We just have a different philosophy. Let me talk about tax relief. If you pay taxes, you ought to get tax relief.... I think if you re going to have tax relief, everybody ought to get it. And therefore, wealthy people are going to get it. But the top 1 percent will end up paying one-third of the taxes in America and they get one-fifth of the benefits. MODERATOR: Governor.... What do you say specifically to what the vice president said tonight, he said it many, many times, that your tax cut benefits the top 1 percent of the wealthiest Americans, and you ve heard what he said. BUSH: Of course it does. If you pay taxes, you are going to get a benefit. People who pay taxes will get tax relief.... GORE: Look, this isn t about Governor Bush, it s not about me. It is about you.... If you want somebody who believes that we were better off eight years ago than we are now and that we ought to go back to the kind of policies that we had back then, emphasizing tax cuts mainly for the wealthy, here is your man. If you want somebody who will fight for you and who will fight to have middle-class tax cuts, then I am your man. I want to be. Now, I doubt anybody here makes more than $330,000 a year. I won t ask you, but if you do, you re in the top 1 percent.... But if everyone here in this audience was... in the middle of the middle-class, then the tax cuts for every single one of you all added up would be less than the tax cut his plan would give to just one member of that top wealthiest 1 percent. Now you judge for yourselves whether or not that s fair.... Excerpts from the third televised debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush, October 17, 2000 the Bush campaign in Florida, made an announcement. She said that once the absentee ballots were in, she would certify the results of the presidential race on Saturday, November 18, without including any additional votes from the hand recounts because, she maintained, those tallies would arrive too late under Florida law. That night, Gore went on national television and proposed that the two candidates agree in advance to accept as final the results of manual recounts in selected Florida counties, or in all 67 of the state s counties if Bush preferred, plus the absentee ballots. He also urged that the two rival presidential candidates meet to improve the tone of our dialogue in America. 53 Bush quickly rejected the offer, saying that the disputed presidential election should be decided on the basis of law, not the result of deals. 54 On Thursday, November 16, the Republicans lost their bid to halt the manual recount of the vote. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the hand counting could continue; but the court left open the question of whether the results of those hand counts would have to be included in the final statewide vote tally. On Friday, November 17, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Secretary of State Harris not to certify Election 2000: A Case Study 351

11 The controversial ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida. Democrats argued that because of its design, some Gore supporters mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan. the election results until the Court could hear arguments from both sides on Monday, November 20. On Saturday, November 18, after the overseas ballots had been counted, Bush had a 930-vote lead statewide. Palm Beach and Broward Counties continued their manual counts; and Miami-Dade County decided that it would begin its hand count on Monday. On November 20, Gore s attorneys, led by David Boies, a prominent trial lawyer, urged the Florida Supreme Court to allow recounts to proceed and to require Katherine Harris to include the results of the recounts in the final state tally. Bush s lawyers argued that the deadline for including the recounts had passed and that it was unfair to recount votes only in selected Democratic counties. Shortly before 10 P.M. on November 21, the court announced its unanimous decision: It allowed the recounts to continue for 5 days and ordered Harris to in- clude the results when she certified the election. Rejecting the Republican argument that recounts by hand were unreliable, the court declared: Although error cannot be completely eliminated in any tabulation of the ballots, our society has not yet gone so far as to place blind faith in machines. In almost all endeavors, including elections, humans routinely correct the errors of machines. The very next day, however, the Gore camp was dealt an unexpected setback when, as Republican demonstrators chanted noisily outside, election officials in Miami-Dade County stopped their hand recount, declaring that it could not be completed by the deadline set by the court. At the same time, Bush s lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling of the Florida high court. On November 24, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. As the hand recounts continued in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, Gore s lawyers made it clear that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, the state co-chairman of George W. Bush s presidential campaign, found herself in the eye of the post-election political hurricane. 352 CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

12 With members of the news media watching through the window, Palm Beach County s election officials conduct a hand recount of the paper ballots. the vice president would contest the election results in Florida, once they were officially certified. Gore s supporters argued that a recount in Miami-Dade alone, where almost 700,000 people had voted, might had it not been halted have provided Gore the margin of victory in the state. At 7:30 P.M. EST on Sunday night, November 26, the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, officially certified the election results, which showed Bush now in the lead over Gore by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million votes cast. However, Harris rejected the partial tally submitted by weary Palm Beach election officials, who had been unable to complete their hand recount by the 5 P.M. deadline. The television networks broke into their regular programming to cover Harris s announcement in the state capitol in Tallahassee. I hereby declare Governor George W. Bush the winner of Florida s 25 electoral votes, she said to the cheers of Bush supporters gathered outside. Two hours later, at 9:30 P.M., flanked by two American flags in the Texas state capitol in Austin, Bush appeared on national television to declare he was honored and humbled to have won the state of Florida, which gives us the needed electoral votes to win the election. He was, he said, ready to serve as America s next president. If Gore moved forward with a legal contest to the outcome in Florida, Bush added, it would not be the best route for America. He did not offer to withdraw his own appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, November 27, Gore s attorneys filed a lawsuit in Tallahassee, the Florida state capital, contesting the results in Miami-Dade, where the recount had been halted, in Palm Beach, where the recount was rejected, and in tiny Nassau county in northern Florida, where there had been confusion in the vote count. That night, with millions of Americans back home after the long Thanksgiving weekend, Gore addressed the voters on television with a backdrop of even more American flags than Bush had displayed. In a democracy, Gore said, every vote should be counted. That is all we have asked since Election Day a complete count of all the votes cast in Florida....We haven t had that yet. The political framework for the struggle was clear: Bush had all but declared himself the next president of the United States. Florida, where his brother Jeb was governor, had officially put him over the top. Gore was saying, in effect, not so fast there are still votes to be counted. Since Gore led by more than 300,000 votes in the national popular vote, the vice president felt he had the moral authority to continue the fight. But the clock was ticking; December 12 was the deadline for Florida to designate the electors who would meet to vote for president and vice president on December 18, as other electors would do in state capitals throughout the country. And opinion polls showed that many members of the American public wanted the election settled. On December 4, the U.S. Supreme Court avoiding any definitive ruling in the presidential election dispute sent the recount case back to the Florida Supreme Court, asking that court to clarify the basis of its November 21 decision that had allowed the hand recounts to continue. That same afternoon, a state court in Tallahassee emphatically rejected Gore s plea to order the recounts resumed. Gore s lawyers immediately appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. Friday, December 8, was a day of high drama in Florida. First, two state judges ruled against Gore supporters in Seminole and Martin counties who sought to have absentee ballots disqualified because Republican party workers had filled in missing data on ballot applications. But less than two hours later, the Florida Supreme Court handed down its ruling on Gore s recount appeal. It held for the Vice President, ordering recounts of undervotes ballots on which machines had not registered a vote in all 67 Florida counties. The Court also restored certain disputed votes to Gore, reducing Bush s lead to 154 votes statewide. The Bush lawyers immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Election 2000: A Case Study 353

13 TABLE How Groups Voted in 2000 Gore Bush Nader All (100%) 48% 48% 2% Men (48%) 42% 53% 3% Women (52%) 54% 43% 2% Whites (82%) 42% 54% 3% Blacks (10%) 90% 8% 1% Hispanics (4%) 67% 31% 2% Asian (2%) 54% 41% 4% Married (65%) 44% 53% 2% Unmarried (35%) 57% 38% 4% Didn t complete high school (5%) 59% 39% 1% High school graduate (21%) 48% 49% 1% Some college (32%) 45% 51% 3% College graduate (24%) 45% 51% 3% Postgraduate (18%) 52% 44% 3% Age (17%) 48% 46% 5% (33%) 48% 49% 2% (28%) 48% 49% 2% 60 and up (23%) 51% 47% 2% Family income: Less than $15,000 (7%) 57% 37% 4% $15,000 29,999 (16%) 54% 41% 3% $30,000 49,999 (24%) 49% 48% 2% $50,000 or over (53%) 45% 52% 2% White Protestants (47%) 34% 63% 2% Catholics (26%) 49% 47% 2% Jews (4%) 79% 19% 1% Family financial situation compared with 1996: Better (50%) 61% 36% 2% Worse (11%) 35% 60% 3% About the same (38%) 33% 63% 4% Democrats (39%) 86% 11% 2% Republicans (35%) 8% 91% 1% Independents (27%) 45% 47% 6% Liberals (20%) 80% 13% 6% Moderates (50%) 52% 44% 2% Conservatives (29%) 17% 81% 1% 1996 votes: Clinton (46%) 82% 15% 2% Dole (31%) 7% 91% 1% Perot (6%) 27% 64% 7% First-time voters (9%) 52% 43% 4% Union households (26%) 59% 37% 3% SOURCE: New York Times, November 12, 2000, section 4, p. 4. Less than 24 hours later, on Saturday afternoon, another thunderbolt: by a 5 4 vote, a split U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay that stopped the recount in Florida that was already underway. On Monday, December 11, the Court heard arguments from both sides. Just before 10 P.M. December 12, on a freezing night in Washington, a rancorous, bitterly divided United States Supreme Court handed down its unsigned decision in the historic case of Bush v. Gore. By a vote of 5 4, the Court reversed the Florida high court, holding that because there were no uniform standards for inspecting ballots in a statewide recount, it could not be done without violating the constitutional requirements of equal protection and due process of law to protect the fundamental right of each voter in Florida. In a stinging dissent, Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bador Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer warned: Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. But the Supreme Court majority, by ruling for George W. Bush, had settled the election. The next night, Vice President Al Gore conceded in a televised address to the nation. An hour later, President-elect Bush went on television with a call for national reconciliation. He hoped the voters would move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past. He said he was thankful that Americans were able to resolve our electoral differences in a peaceful way. And he promised to work for all Americans, whether you voted for me or not. Vice President Gore had sounded a similar theme, calling on the voters, especially his own supporters, to unite behind our next president. He added: Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court s decision, I accept it. At last, the historic election of 2000 was over. Despite the long, divisive post-election struggle, several noteworthy features of the voting patterns of 2000 were clear: 1. More than million voters went to the polls. The number of people who voted was up by about 9 million from the presidential election of 1996; and the percentage of the voting age population who voted approximately 51 percent was about 2.2 percentage points higher than the 48.8 percent who voted in The overall gain in the turnout was only moderate; but in some of the states that were closely contested including Florida and Michigan voter turnout increased sharply. 2. George W. Bush s share of the total popular vote was 47.9 percent. He received 539,947 fewer popular votes than Gore; and Bush thus became the third American president since the Civil War to win the presidency while losing the popular vote. The other two were Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 and Benjamin Harrison in Ralph Nader and the Green Party polled 2,831,066 votes. Nader s 2.7 percent of the total vote was far short of the 5 percent he needed for the Green Party to qualify for federal campaign matching 354 CHAPTER 11 VOTING BEHAVIOR AND ELECTIONS

14 funds in But in Florida and New Hampshire, states with 29 electoral votes that went to Bush, Nader s vote total was far larger than the margin by which Gore lost these states. 4. Pat Buchanan made a weak showing. He received 447,798 votes (0.4 percent) on the Reform Party ticket an enormous drop from the vote the Reform Party received in 1996 when Ross Perot headed the party s ticket (8.2 million votes). 5. One of the most striking features of the 2000 election was the continuation of the gender gap the tendency of women and men to vote differently in the presidential race. Among men, Bush led Gore 53 to 42 percent. Women favored Gore over Bush 54 percent to 43 percent. (See Table ) 6. Voters evaluations of their own economic circumstances were strongly reflected in the returns. Half of the voters reported that their family s financial situation was better in 2000 than it had been in Among that large group of voters, Gore led Bush by 61 to 36 percent. Among voters who said that their family s situation was worse or was the same in 2000, however, Bush polled 60 percent or more of the vote. (See Table ) 7. There was a pronounced sectional pattern in the voting returns. Gore ran well ahead of Bush in nearly all of the Northeast, and led by somewhat smaller margins in most areas along the West Coast. Except in Florida, Bush ran well ahead of Gore throughout the South; and Bush also had a substantial lead in the Plains States and in most of the Rocky Mountain States. In the Midwest, the vote totals of the two candidates were very close. 8. Gore ran well among some traditionally Democratic groups. Among members of union households, Gore led by 59 to 37 percent. (Bush polled more votes from union households than Dole received in 1996, however.) Exit polls also showed that Gore did exceptionally well among two groups that were heavily Democratic throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. African Americans voted 90 percent for Gore, and 79 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for him. (See Table ) 9. Hispanic Americans, who voted 73 percent to 20 percent for Clinton over Dole in 1996, were still in the Democratic column in 2000 but by a smaller margin. Hispanic Americans gave 67 percent of their votes to Gore and 31 percent to Bush. In Florida, however, which turned out to be the crucial state, many Cuban Americans were strong supporters of Bush especially in Miami-Dade County. 10. Former supporters of Ross Perot provided a vitally important element of Bush s electoral strength. More than 6 million persons who had voted for Perot in 1996 voted again in Among those former Perot voters, Bush led Gore by 64 to 27 percent. In other words, some 4 million former Perot supporters cast their ballots for Bush, compared with less than 2 million who voted for Gore. 11. The 11 contests for governor in 2000 left the Democrats with a net gain of one governorship. But there were still 29 Republican governors, compared with 19 Democratic governors. Two governors were independents. 12. In the battle for control of the House of Representatives, the Republicans repulsed a major Democratic effort to win control of the House. Democrats made a net gain of just one or two House seats, leaving the Republicans with a narrow majority of about 221 to 212, pending some final vote recounts. In addition, two independents were elected to the House In the contests for the U.S. Senate, the Democrats made a net gain of four Senate seats, with the result that the chamber was evenly divided, with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats. This close balance promised another spirited battle for control of the Senate in the midterm elections of In 2002, it appeared that the Democrats would have 14 seats to defend and the Republicans would have Overall, the elections of 2000 left the United States with an exceptionally close balance of power between Democrats and Republicans. The stage was set for a continuation of the struggle for ascendancy between the two parties. And that battle was sure to be intensified when the states began to draw new congressional district boundary lines for the House of Representatives in At the same time, the nation would also be watching closely to see whether the new president and the two major parties could govern effectively in the wake of the bitter battle, the lawsuits, and the harsh words exchanged between the Bush and Gore camps in the extraordinary post-election fight for Florida s 25 electoral votes. Although the election was finally over, many larger questions remained. Until November 7, 2000, very few people had realized the horse-and-buggy nature of the voting process in America or the great variation in the way that elections have been run in the nation s 3000 counties in the 50 states. Some areas used machines, others ballots that were punched or marked by hand. The reason for this patchwork quilt of voting systems was money: most counties had small budgets and spent little on election equipment. Even before the fight over Florida had ended, there were calls for reform, both in and out of Congress. Legislation was introduced in the Senate to provide matching grants to the states as an incentive to adopt more modern voting procedures. Some experts urged that touch-screen machines, like those used in ATMs, be used for voting. Under the federal system, however, it might be difficult to achieve a uniform method of voting, since the states control the election machinery. The remarkably close election reminded Americans that the winner of the popular vote may not win in the Election 2000: A Case Study 355