Franken talks about the "values voting" in the 2004 election. He cites a study by Ansolbehere and Stewart from MIT that talked about "gay marriage" and how it
hurt Bush in 2004. I looked on line and found an article from the Boston Review that breaks the study down.
source:
Truth in Numbers: Moral values and the gay-marriage backlash did not help BushIn general, then, voters shifted in a pro-Bush direction in 2004. What happens when we factor in the issue of gay marriage?
Eleven states—Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah—had measures before the voters that would prohibit gay marriage, and in some cases civil unions. Nine of the 11—all but Michigan and Oregon—had gone for Bush in 2000, and only three—Michigan, Ohio, and Oregon—were battleground states. These are hardly the states one would choose if gay marriage were being used as a wedge issue.
***
At the state level, then, marriage referenda seem not to have worked to Bush’s advantage. If we move down to the county level, we find even firmer support for this conclusion. In states with gay marriage on the ballot, Bush gained additional support in the counties he carried in 2000. But in these same states he also lost votes in Democratic counties generally and—perhaps more surprisingly—in evenly divided counties.
The overall result is that the polarization of the electorate over gay marriage aided Kerry, not Bush.The interpretation of Bush’s 2004 victory will surely shape the agenda of his second term.
Many commentators have described the election as a triumph of the Christian right, which rallied around “moral values” using the threat of gay marriage as a catalyst. This interpretation, if it takes hold, will embolden those on the right within the Bush administration.
It will also lead Democrats in the wrong direction as they respond to their loss. John Kerry’s running mate, Senator John Edwards, has already commented that “voters have to believe that our values—my values and the values of other Democratic leaders—are the same values they believe in.” The evidence shows that the Republican victory rests more on fear of terrorism and an election-year uptick in the economy than on the activism of the party’s right wing.
Responding to the tangible worries of the vast middle of the political spectrum rather than a polarizing moral agenda should be the basis of Democratic strategy over the next four years. Stephen Ansolabehere is a professor of political science at MIT and the co-author of
The Media Game and Going Negative.
Charles Stewart III is a professor of political science at MIT and the author of
Budget Reform Politics.
More at link (I only redacted one paragraph from the article).
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