2004 election

The Election 2004: Public Voting Behavior

In the United States presidential election of 2004, the contest was more between George W. Bush, the president of the United States and the candidate from the Republican Party and the Democratic candidate, John Kerry.
The 2004 election was actually the case of referendum on the performances of the last president George W. Bush. Although John Kerry tried hard through his campaign activities to criticize the presidential performances but George W. Bush could defend all his activities he had done during his presidency defeated John Kerry vigorously.
During the time of election both the candidates differed in personal characteristics and public policy issues used different campaign strategies to influence public minds in their own benefits.

Public Voting Behavior:

To explain the public voting behavior in the United States it is crucial to go through three different models of voting:
1. The Party Identification Model
2. The Issue Voting Model
3. Non-voting Model

Nowadays the American people are not considered as voters following the first model. The party identification model some how has been expired since 1960s. Before that time people were very strong party identifiers. Most of the people developed their party identification when they were teenager not willing to change their voting behavior for their lives. So as the most two important parties were the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, they were mostly divided in two groups, republican advocates or Democratic advocates.
For those who follow the party identification model, it was not an important matter either their party performed badly in government, adopts policy against the advocates’ benefits or even if they disagreed with the party’s representatives in his/her national policies; they just wanted to support their parties (although recently we see public behavior based on this model rarely but we can not say that there are no people who have the strong party affiliation).
“In the 1992 presidential election, for example, only about 29 percent strongly identified with the Republicans or Democrats, whereas 38 percent did in 1964, a drop of 9 percent” (McKay,et.,2002,p.35)

During the years after 1960s it seems that voters have become more ideologically and politically complicated. So they have mostly followed the issue voting model rather than the party identification model as a result of emerging new issues such as civil rights, Vietnam and the growth of mass media. For the new generation of voters the importance of the issues and the characteristics of the candidates are the matter not the attachment to the parties, so they vote on the issues prospectively and retrospectively.
In the prospective way the voters are supposed to be knowledgeable about the main issues of the time. They concentrate on the parties’ policies on the main issues then they compare those policies with each other and then they select the candidate whose policies are compatible to their benefits.
But for voters who tend to vote retrospectively it is not crucial to gather information about the issues; if the last government have done its performances good especially on the ground of economy, it would be hopeful to reelect again.

To explain the third model it is necessary to answer the question that why in the United States, the country proud of its democracy, the number of people who are eligible to participate in election is so low.
The fact is that the American people do not bother themselves to go through the process of election which required them to get information about the candidates, their policies on issues, the differences between them and the compatibility between the position of issues and their preferences. In general speaking people in the United States have been drawn in their every day lives and they look at the world by the glasses of money. If they live in a good economic condition it is no matter for them to have Mr. X as a president or Mr. Y.

The Public Behavior: The 2004 Election

The 2004 election was the period not concentrating on party affiliation but on the candidates’ characteristics, their position on major issues and the influence of some psychological factors such as morality and terror.
Security was the matter for American people in the year 2004, they had experienced the great fear aftermath the terrorist attacks in September 2001. They believed that they were secure and no one can destroy their calmness in their beloved and exceptional country but being attacked in their homeland broke the image of the United States as the country with a high security in their minds.
As a result they mostly relied on their president George W. Bush, a warlike person, to save them against an unknown enemy. So the only benefits of those terrorist attacks was changing the presidential position of George W. Bush as the candidate with”the perfect bloodlines [who come] to office amid charges that his was a bastard presidency, sired not by the voters but by the courts [in the 2000 election]” (Silberstein, 2002, p.40) to an American hero.
Therefore, although moderate people in America criticized Bush for his war policy but the public mostly preferred to live in peace in their own country with a powerful president so they did what the party affiliations had done in the past by some changes, they supported the peace party that tried to brought calmness for their people by killing innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you fear from unknown enemy what do you prefer to do?
You will pray and ask God to help and save you. Most of the American people did so; therefore they attracted to the candidate who was more religious and talks about morality; what was ignored in Kerry’s campaign.

If we put aside those American people who were indifferent for their country’s destiny based on the third model, the security with different perception was the matter in the 2004 election.


References:
1. Silberstein, Sandra, War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11, Routledge,
Taylor & Francis group, 2002.
2. McKay, David, et al., Controversies in American Politics and Society. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.
3. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1530-2415.2005.00060.x?cookieSet=1