It's the ZIP Code, Stupid: The key to the American mind - Brief Article

National Review, Dec 4, 2000 by Kate O'Beirne

Voters frustrated with the chaotic result of the closest presidential election in over a century have only themselves to blame. As Fred Siegel, a professor at Cooper Union College in Brooklyn and senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, puts it, "America is as deeply divided as a country almost completely contented with itself can be." The divisions correlate neatly with where we live, how we live, and whom we live with.

Who would have thought it? After the campaigns pored over all the polling cross-tabs to guide their strategy, after all those focus groups devoted to divining the minds of the voters, after hundreds of millions of dollars spent on carefully calibrated political ads, it turns out that the most reliable predictor of our voting behavior is . . . our ZIP code. Al Gore carried voters in our largest cities by a three-to-one margin. In cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000, Gore's margin was three to two. The suburbs split evenly between the candidates, and Bush carried smaller towns and rural areas with 60 percent of the vote.

This geographic divide reflects a cultural split over the role of government. Government subsidies and mediation are valued in the cities, while in areas less densely populated, government is viewed as a remote force best kept at arm's length. These geographic differences leave the electorate evenly divided: Forty percent of voters live in the suburbs, and the rest of the electorate is split evenly between large cities and small-town/rural areas. This is, in part, good news for Republicans, because the fastest-growing areas in the country are outside our cities. On the other hand, as density increases outside city limits (as in, for example, the environs of Phoenix, Ariz.), these areas lean Democratic.

These geographic differences are reinforced by lifestyle differences. Bush carried married voters by 9 points, while single voters backed Gore by a margin of 19 points. Parents with minor children gave Bush a 7-point advantage over Gore. Overall, 72 percent of Republican voters are married, compared with 59 percent of Democratic voters. Married voters are less likely to be city-dwellers. In Seattle, for example, married couples with children make up only 12 percent of the population. With urban life increasingly resembling a scene from Swingers or Sex in the City, and married families seeking the schools and open spaces of suburbs and small towns, marital status tracks with geographic location.

There is a similar division with respect to religious observance. About half of all Republicans attend church at least once a week; nearly half of Democrats go to church services seldom or never. Here again, family status and geography reinforce the differences. Married couples and people who live in rural areas are more likely to attend church regularly. It seems, as Siegel argues, that people's lifestyle determines their ideology. Thus, married folk in the countryside who attend church have more conservative views on abortion, gun ownership, gay rights, and the role of government.

The exit polls provide some guidance on the effectiveness of the candidates' strategies in their attempt to appeal to the divided electorate. Bush won 80 percent of those whose chief concern was that the president be "honest and trustworthy," but an equal number of voters cared most about experience and command of the issues-and these voters supported Gore overwhelmingly. So "personality" issues proved roughly a wash, but Bush did score points on leadership qualities: By a two-to-one margin, voters saw him as a strong leader.

The top issue of concern to voters was the economy and jobs (18 percent), followed by education (15 percent), with taxes and Social Security tied for third place (14 percent). Sixty percent of economy voters backed Gore, and 80 percent of tax voters supported Bush. The governor clearly would have helped himself with an economic-growth message tied to his tax-cut plan. Gore had an 8-point advantage on education, and an 18-point advantage on Social Security. But even as Bush lost voters who cared most about Social Security, there is evidence that the governor won the Social Security debate as well as the argument over taxes: By a margin of 18 points, voters favored Bush's plan for personal Social Security investment accounts, and a majority of all voters preferred across-the-board tax relief to targeted tax cuts.

Bush actually won the two voter groups that were expected to pick the presidential winner-white Catholic voters (by 7 points) and independents (barely). The gender gap, however, is now a permanent feature of presidential elections: Men gave Bush an 11-point margin, while women gave the same margin to Gore. This gap is not actually as hopeless for the GOP as it might appear, because black women vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and thus skew the overall women's vote. But this year, Bush received only a 1-point advantage among white women-which surprised American Enterprise Institute polling expert Karlyn Bowman. Almost 60 percent of working women supported Gore, she points out, but the number of women who don't work outside the home should have been expected to support Bush by more than the 8-point margin they gave him.