Final Just the Facts: Memo from Matthew Dowd

George W. Bush ^ | November 4, 2004

[RWR8189]

TO: INTERESTED PARTIES
FR: MATTHEW DOWD
CHIEF STRATEGIST
RE: INITIAL STRATEGIC ANALYSIS

President Bush won a historic victory yesterday by defeating John Kerry by more than 3.5 million votes,

58.6 million to 55.1 million (51% to 48%) and winning the Electoral College 286 to 252. In doing so, President Bush:

• Becomes the first presidential candidate to win more than 50% of the popular vote since 1988.

• Received the most votes by any presidential candidate in history - over 58 million, even breaking President Reagan’s 1984 mark of 54.5 million votes.

• Becomes the first President re-elected while gaining seats in the House and the Senate since 1936, and the first Republican President to be re-elected with House and Senate majorities since 1924.

• Received a higher percentage of the popular vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.

• Garnered 7 million more popular votes than in 2000 - more than twice the amount that President Clinton increased his vote between 1992 and 1996.

• Increased his percent of the vote from 2000 in 45 out of 50 states, including a 4 percent increase in John Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts.  President Bush ran just as strongly in the key battleground states as he did nationally. In the 14 most competitive states (AR, CO, FL, IA, MI, MN, MO, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, WI, and WV), President Bush won 51% of the vote to John Kerry’s 49% -- an improvement of 2 points from his 2000 performance in those states. Yesterday also revealed that the Republican Party has made historic gains with minority voters and women. Exit polling revealed that President Bush won 42% of Hispanics (up from 35% in 2000), 11% of African-Americans (up from 9% in 2000), 24% of Jewish voters (up from 19% in 2000), and 47% of women (up from 43% in 2000). In Florida, 55% of Hispanic voters supported President Bush, an increase of 6 points from 2000. Just as we predicted, undecided and late-deciding voters went to the President Bush by a small margin. Despite media predictions that Kerry would win up to 90% of late-deciding voters, exit polling reveals that President Bush won voters who decided in the week before the election, 51% to 48%. Furthermore, as we predicted, yesterday was the first time in modern political history that an equal number of Republicans and Democrats turned out for a presidential election. The Democrats’ 4-point advantage in 2000 evaporated, with Republicans and Democrats both at 37% of the electorate in 2004.

On a strategic and tactical level, Bush-Cheney '04 and the Republican National Committee helped the President turnout a record number of Republicans and make historic gains among swing groups through an unprecedented volunteer grassroots organization and the most sophisticated advertising and voter contact strategy in campaign history: Some highlights include:

• Combining traditional shoe-leather grassroots outreach with an unprecedented online effort to build a network of millions of volunteers who spread the President’s message and helped turnout the vote on Election Day

• Employing cutting-edge research to efficiently target Republicans and Swing Voters through media buys and voter contact, the first time a presidential campaign utilized such research.

• Advertising heavily on national cable and radio to deliver the President’s message to both influentials and voters who had moved away from traditional broadcast TV, another first for a presidential campaign.

• Building new support among Hispanic and African American voters through local outreach, arned media, and specialty media buys.

• Delivering maps and directions to polling places to our committed supporters and using ophisticated, targeted Internet advertising in the closing days of the campaign to get out the ote.

On a personal note, this should be the last “Dowd” memo because I am GTT (for those unfamiliar, that eans “Gone To Texas.”)

[King Prout]

go to your FR homepage.
select the option "links"

a hotlink+URL list of all the FR bookmarks you have made will appear

[Cedar]

I am eternally grateful that Bush won. I said many prayers.

That being said, I think what most liberals refer to is not so much the county map, but the population numbers. They say Kerry carried several large cities, New York, LA, etc. where lots of people live.

So their argument is... even though the map is mostly red, a lot of those counties don't have many people living in them.

Again, I'm just repeating their argument...I voted for Bush!!

[RobRoy]

>>go to your FR homepage.
select the option "links"

a hotlink+URL list of all the FR bookmarks you have made will appear<<

You would think so, but nope. Only "some" do. The one correlation I noticed was the one I mentioned in my previous post.

[GeorgeW23225]

Well, if that is true, how come President Bush has 59,100,000 votes and sKerry has 55,000.000 ?? It seems to me that there really are people living in those counties.

Besides, take our 2 largest States (New York and California) and count their votes for sKerry. Then take Georgia and Texas, and count their votes for President Bush.

Guess what??? We win!!

Liberals AWAYS have an excuse for their shortcomings. I, however, always have the truth to confront them with!!

I am a "thorn" in a liberal butt!!! :-)

[OPS4]

Michael Moore will have to Greyhound.
Ops4 God BLess America!

[GeorgeW23225]

I forgot something. The 83% of the counties WON by President Bush has a higher population than the 17% that sKerry won.
Actually, by many, MANY millions of people.

Also......less crime per capita !! :-)

I just love exploding liberal lies and myths!!

[PeoplesRepublicOfWashington]

The only reason Clinton won his first term was because of Ross Perot.

[King Prout]

hrmn... odd. mine works just fine.

maybe you have...
could it be...?
GREMLINS!

[Agrarian]

Carter did not win a majority of the popular vote in 1976, I'm pretty sure. I think Johnson in 1964 was the last Dem to do it. May be wrong, though.

[reformedliberal]

I don't think it's a secret: a series of surveys were done by volunteers starting last winter that contacted people, narrowing them from affiliation to issue and from unreliable to reliable. There were some repetitions of the surveys with an increasingly targeted population for each one. By the end, we knew who, where, what issue and how strong the support. Then, we got them to the polls.

Standard DB management tools were used at the grassroots level. What they did at the top levels, I don't know, but I fantasize computerized maps with every head counted and every issue/degree of support charted.

Anyone who worked at the grassroots phone level from February--November 2 knows this information.

[Robert A Cook PE]

You noticed that, didn't you?

[GeorgeW23225]

Thanks. Very interesting. Although it isn't a secret, I guess we just do it better than the democRats!! :-)

[There's millions of'em]

...Dowd's numbers showed a 51-48 in favor of Bush for undecideds.

Undecideds are a myth.

[dmartin]

...Another myth is that Clinton never won a majority "because of Ross Perot"...

Man, I had not heard that one. That's exactly backwards. Conservatives went for Perot, not liberals. Bush 41 would have been reelected handily.

John Scott and the White House reporter on Fox were stating exactly that prior to the Presidents news conference today. First I heard of it. Maybe they get their talking points from the DNC these days.

[reformedliberal]

They are too busy implying that Rove has supernatural powers to control the universe!

I came away from the campaign experience realizing that our guys are all anal-retentive number crunchers. It was the thoroughness, the mind-numbing attention to minutia, the hierarchical organization that won this. It is one thing to GOTV. It is something else to know exactly which vote you need to make sure to get out.

Not to mention that they began lining up volunteers in the late winter of 2003. At every event, every rally and on the website there were efforts to sign up volunteers. In fact, our first survey was of those who signed up to winnow them down to those willing to phone. Sometime in September, IIRC, we were told via conference call that the campaign was sending us names of fresh volunteers who signed up via the website.

At the very end, counties that really needed a last push got a team of crack GOTV operatives from DC. These were college-age kids who had extensive campaign experience. The organized the volunteers to a finer degree. Some of ours were obsessed with the size of the win they wanted from our area.

Being Republicans, everyone had a great work ethic, too.

[StJacques]

"Carter did not win a majority of the popular vote in 1976, I'm pretty sure. I think Johnson in 1964 was the last Dem to do it. May be wrong, though."

I actually checked to make certain before I made the post. In 1976 Jimmy Carter received 50.1% of the total vote, which is a "popular majority," but only just so.

Presidential Vote in 1976

Presidential Candidate	Electoral Vote	Popular Vote	Pct	Party	Running Mate (Electoral Votes)
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. of Georgia (W)	297	40,825,839	50.1%	Democrat	Walter Frederick Mondale of Minnesota (297)
Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. of Michigan	240	39,147,770	48.0%	Republican	Robert Joseph Dole of Kansas (241)
Ronald Wilson Reagan of California	1	(not running)	-	Republican	(1)
Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota	0	756,691	0.9%	(Independent)
Roger MacBride of Vermont	0	173,011	0.2%	Libertarian	David Bergland
Lester Maddox of Georgia	0	170,531	0.2%	American Independent	William D. Dyke
Thomas J Anderson	0	160,773	0.2%	American
Other	0	321,274	0.4%
Total	538	81,555,889	100.0%

You can "pop up" the following web page to find this information at:

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/U.S.-presidential-election,-1976

[Southack]

"The Democrats’ 4-point advantage in 2000 evaporated, with Republicans and Democrats both at 37% of the electorate in 2004."

The Democrats' have progressively lost voter participation percentage points in each successive Presidential election. There was a time back in the 1930's where there were more than 70% of American voters registered as Democrats. Now they turn out a mere 37% (remember that figure when checking poll # internals in 2006), finally matched by Republicans.

Moreover, the *new* voters in this election will see decidedly different behavior in their futures based upon who they voted for.

Americans love winners, after all, so the new voters who voted Republican in 2004 will be more motivated to vote Republican in future elections.

The opposite is the case for the new voters who went for the losing Democratic Party.

[Southack]

1992 = 44,908,254
1996 = 47,402,357

---

92,310,611 = Total votes for WJ Clinton

---

2000 = 50,456,002
2004 = 59,100,000*

---

109,556,002 = Total votes counted so far for GW Bush

So who is the most popular President in history?!

[Cedar]

Thanks for the info. It helps to know.

Would be interesting also to know the actual numbers for comparison of the population in the 83% counties vs. 17% counties.

And maybe also the actual numbers of registered voters in each group, and comparison of numbers of those who actually voted.

(getting more complex, but would be interesting--I'm needing a statistician)

[GeorgeW23225]

It was an amazing effort!!

The results were well worth the effort.