Bush's Iowa Win Highlights Dems' Trouble

abc ^ | 5 Nov 2004

[demlosers]

Bush's Victory in Iowa Highlights Trouble That Looms for Democrats in Shifting Midwest

AP

DES MOINES, Iowa Nov 5, 2004 — President Bush added another stroke of Republican red to the electoral map by winning Iowa on Friday, underscoring the GOP's gains as well as the political problems that loom for Democrats in a shifting Midwest.

As county officials tabulated absentee and provisional ballots, totals showed Bush with 745,980 votes to Sen. John Kerry's 732,764. The number still to be counted was far too small to change the outcome of the election.

Not that Iowa's seven electoral votes mattered to Bush's overall victory winning Ohio on Wednesday gave him the 270 electoral votes necessary for a second term. With all 50 states decided, Bush finished with 286 electoral votes and Kerry 252.

Iowa had voted Democratic since 1984. Bush made a strong challenge here and in Wisconsin and Minnesota, three states the Democrats once considered their own.

"They are not Democratic states. They are competitive states," Michigan State University political science professor David Rohde said. "For the last three elections, Iowa has tracked the national popular vote."

Republicans only narrowly lost Wisconsin and Minnesota. The shift toward the GOP sends a troubling signal to Democrats who are finding once comfortable states in the upper Midwest increasingly up for grabs.

"Minnesota has certainly been decreasingly Democratic," said Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford. "Minnesota is not the liberal bastion it used to be in the days of Walter Mondale. Wisconsin may also be moving in that direction."

Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, encouraged Democrats to move more toward a voter mobilization model that relies on local volunteers getting out the vote.

"The Deaniacs showed in Iowa there are limits to the effectiveness of Boston activists appearing on the front porch of rural Iowans," Borosage said.

In Iowa and elsewhere, Kerry didn't make a strong enough economic argument to prevent lower income, older rural voters who might have supported him from sliding back toward focusing on cultural issues, said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, an informal adviser to the Kerry campaign.

"These voters were waiting for a different kind of election focused on economic issues and they didn't get it," Greenberg said.

Bush put a high priority on winning Iowa, campaigning in two communities here on the day before the election.

Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver had asked the public for patience while the state pursued its vote-counting process, in place for 30 years.

Absentee ballots in Iowa can be counted up until noon on Monday, but they must have been postmarked by Nov. 1. That means nearly all absentee ballots have arrived at local election offices.

Voters cast a smaller number of provisional ballots, as many as 15,000, and some of those already have been reviewed by special precinct boards meeting in each county.

Counties must canvass their votes on Tuesday, but they have until Nov. 12 to submit vote tallies to the secretary of state's office. The state will not certify the results until Nov. 29.

Both candidates have considerable political history in Iowa. Bush campaigned in Iowa before winning the state's first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses in 2000, launching his campaign for the Republican nomination.

Kerry began campaigning in Iowa nearly three years ago. His surprising win in the Jan. 19 caucuses over a slate of eight other candidates gave him the momentum to claim the Democratic nomination.

[Free Vulcan]

He'll have to run again because the state will need someone to save us from those evil Republicans.

[Free Vulcan]

He is not. He is up in 2008.

[SolomoninSouthDakota]

Someone's got to figure out how those Southern states with some pretty sizable large cities are still being won by conservatives. What are they doing differently in their cities? I don't understand this. Aren't there large cities in GA and TN etc. that dwarf the rural populations as well?

[Iowegian]

He'll be running for president in 4 years. Hopefully he will do as well as Harkin did when he tried it.

[goldstategop]

We lost Minnesota and Wisconsin by 1%. They'll go red in 2008.

[11th_VA]

Yeah, what's up with Rhode Island - I don't get it either ...

[skinkinthegrass]

.

[Theodore R.]

Harkin is safe until 2008, when he will win again on Hillary's skirts. After all, he was one of "Bill" Clinton's biggest defenders.

[ApesForEvolution]

...followed by Mark Dayton...

[Seattle Conservative]

Wonder if hildebeast will move back to Arkansas and get elected Senator from there, then run for Pres (silly idea, perhaps, but there's no telling what those people will do).

Or, she can stay in NY and get someone like Harold Ford from Tennessee as a VP candidate.

[driftless]

Apparently most of the social conservatives down south follow their conscience and vote Republican. Up here in Wisconsin I know many social conservatives who cannot break the Democratic stronghold over their voting habits. They think Jack Kennedy or even FDR is still running things. They have no idea how leftist the Donkey party has become. They obey their union masters and vote how they're told.

I'm a union member who would like laws passed to stop unions from endorsing candidates. And I know a number of members and even officers in my union who voted for Bush...as do forty percent or more of all union members. It's not all lockstep. I have three non-union sisters who are dedicated Republican-hating Democrats.

[SolomoninSouthDakota]

Maybe you are on to something. Maybe it's a union thing and unions are present with big cities but they are more prevalent in the northern big cities than the southern big cities. If that's the case we should all be very aware of union organizing activity in the South and perhaps some Southern states should be passing laws to deter unions placing undue pressures on their members regarding politics.

[Kuksool]

We really need to pass a national right to work law. President Bush would have easily won PA, WI, MI, and MN if labor unions didn't have such a strong presence there.