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One more observation.
A few months back, one of the major left-wing bloggers, probably suffering from tunnel-vision, stated he knew no Gore voter who would vote for Bush, and therefore there must not be any. He assumed Kerry would benefit from all Gore's voters and Nader voters returning to the fold, which would give Kerry at least 51%. Add in the expected edge the Democrats would have in new voters due to Rock the Vote!, MoveOn and all the 527 money, as well as libertarians, paleoconservatives and others who would switch from having supported Bush, and the only question for him was how big the Kerry landslide would be.
What actually happened?
The Nader voters did return to the fold. Nader got 2,882,728 votes in 2000, and only about 404,000 and counting this year. I doubt the Naderites went to Bush.
New voters weren't as big a boon as Soros and Puffy and the Boss thought. The exit poll showed a 53/46 edge for Kerry among new voters, though there's a large margin of error in that now-infamous exit poll.
Yet Kerry lost.
Dick Morris was right. Kerry could not simultaneously appeal to lefties to get the Naderites back and appeal to Democratic moderates and so-called "9-11 voters." For every Naderite he brought back, he lost more than one Democrat.
If new voters broke at the same rate as all voters, I estimate Kerry lost 3.1 million Gore voters to Bush. If the 53/46 new voter break is correct, Kerry lost almost 3.7 million Gore voters to Bush.
The left is blaming Karl Rove and his ignorant bible-thumpin' gay-hatin' evangelicals for their loss. No doubt some evangelicals were part of the mix, but it was the former Gore voters who changed the balance.
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