Red, blue and battlegrounds

I was interviewed recently about the upcoming presidential election by Estonian Television and Radio. Since the last Russian troops left this small Baltic nation in 1994, the country has been in a mad dash to embrace concepts of democratic government and free market economics.

Still, like many Europeans, they remain confused about the American democracy, especially the (1) Electoral College and (2) how religious/cultural values shape political outcomes in U.S. elections.

My objective during the interview was to discuss how these apparently different concepts actually formed a seamless political strategy that would decide the 2004 presidential election.

The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was established by the framers of the Constitution as a compromise between big and small states in the election process. The Electoral College is a bloc, or weighed, voting system that is designed to give more power to the states with the most votes, but allows for small states to swing an election. Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its U.S. Senators (two in each state) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives, which varies according to the state’s population.

For 2004, Virginia has 13 electoral votes (two U.S. Senators and 11 congressional districts). California’s 55 electoral votes are the largest for any state. New York’s 31 electors also represent a sizeable bloc. It takes a total of 270 votes to win the presidency.

In 48 states, a winner-take-all system exists in which electors cast their votes for the candidate who received the most votes in their state. However, there have been times when electors have voted contrary to the people’s decision. This is entirely legal. Fortunately, it rarely happens.

The goal of a presidential candidate is to put together any combination of states that will provide the needed 270 electoral votes. That is why the Red/Blue imagery is so interesting. Red states, such Virginia, were known to be in the column for President George Bush. Larger states such California and New York were squarely in the camp for U.S. Senator John Kerry. As a result, little campaigning occurred in these states. Consequently, states such Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania (each with at least 20 electoral votes) became the battleground states key to winning the election.

But smaller states such as Hawaii (four electoral votes), Nevada (five electoral votes) and Iowa (seven electoral votes) also drew attention. Vice President Dick Cheney spent the last weekend of the campaign in Hawaii exhorting Republicans and moderate Democrats to vote for the president. Why? Because if Bush did not win Pennsylvania’s 21 electoral votes (which he didn’t), he could nearly compensate for that loss by winning Hawaii, Nevada and Iowa.

Bush strategist Karl Rove also outflanked Senator Kerry on another important factor concerning the Electoral College. He knew that by simply holding the red states Bush won in 2000, he would garner the necessary 270 votes. Several of those states had grown in population, thereby increasing their number of congressional districts and thus their total number of electors. Rove’s strategy was simple: hold the base, win Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, or win Florida, Ohio and several smaller states. Bush did the latter and won.

Looking at a map of red and blue states, one can see the blue states are primarily located on the East and West Coasts while Red states cover the South and Midwest. The Bush strategy was to paint the blue states as Eastern and Hollywood elites, out-of-touch with the cultural and religious values of mainstream America. The strategy worked. For instance, state amendments that declare marriage as only being between a man and woman won in all 11 red states.

As Richard Nixon would say, The Silent Majority spoke loudly in this election.

Early exit interviews suggested a Kerry win. That occurred because many citizens voted for the president but told pollsters otherwise. They were simply being politically correct. If the Democrat Party is once again going to become a national party, they will have to take a more centrist position on moral and cultural values. Former President Bill Clinton was smart enough to realize this — John Kerry wasn’t.

Most European elites don’t understand this fact of American political life either.

That is why they perceive President Bush to be a reckless "cowboy", driven by his religious values. Their blind spot (and the Democrat Party’s as well) is that those values resonate with voters in the red, and increasingly blue, states.

The Democrats will have to soon recognize this political reality. Otherwise, they will remain "blue" as they literally hand control of the executive and legislative branches of government over to the Republican Party.