Yesterday, alas, it was farewell to San Francisco, about which I will have a bit more say shortly. Today we’re in Pittsburgh visiting Jessie at her summer job, on our way back home. I’m still surprised that you can travel to and from the Bay Area without a passport, since it seems like such a foreign country (Great food, exotic natives, some friendlies amidst large numbers of anti-Americans…).
The flight was great, except for having to wait an hour and a half waiting for our bag at baggage claim after we arrived. (Helloooo! USAir, Anybody home?) Thus I was out of it all day, and the only item of interest I saw all day was a column in USA Today by the Republican pollster Whit Ayres, who argued that “[c]ultural values could give Bush the edge in the election.” He finds that voters in the 17 battleground states are split evenly between Bush and Kerry but that
swing states are anything but equally divided on the key cultural issues. On issue after issue, swing states look much more like red than blue states.
Specifically, Ayres’ recent survey has found:
Voters in red states and swing states oppose civil unions for gay couples by double-digit margins, but voters in blue states overwhelmingly support civil unions.
Three-fourths of red-state voters and two-thirds of swing-state voters oppose legalizing same-sex marriage, but only half of the blue-state voters oppose same-sex marriage.
Red-state and swing-state voters support the goals of the National Rifle Association by double-digit margins, but blue-state voters oppose those goals by an equally large margin.
Red-state voters support a ban on partial-birth abortion by a 14-point margin, and swing-state voters support a ban by 15 points, but blue-state voters support a ban by only 6 points.
Three-fourths of red-state voters and two-thirds of swing-state voters say religion is “very important” in their lives, but only half of blue-state voters agree. Indeed, this religious-vs.-secular dimension explains many differences on other cultural attitudes.
Interesting.
I hope you get to enjoy Pgh before it starts raining again. And it will. Soon. :-(
But unfortunately, the election will not be decided by a plurality of all voters, but by a state-by-state plurality designating electoral college votes. So it doesn’t matter by what margin a candidate wins in a given state, it’s really whether he wins enough states’ electoral votes overall that determines the outcome.