News Updates Election
2004: By Paul Clolery and Ephraim Feig The presidential election could be headed toward a second consecutive cycle in which the eventual president did not garner the majority of the popular vote. According to results of a survey of senior executives at nonprofits across the country by The NonProfit Times and Kintera, Democrat Party nominee Sen. John F. Kerry has a commanding popular lead. But, his support in the so-called "swing states" is softer than expected. That softness could push swing states to President George W. Bush, again giving him an electoral win, despite a potential popular majority for the challenger. Bush received 37.6 percent of the vote in his home state of Texas (39 percent more than his national average), while Kerry received 89 percent in his home state of Massachusetts (28 percent more than his national average). In hotly contested Florida, Kerry garnered 56 percent of the nonprofit sector's vote (15 percent less than his national average). Independent candidate Ralph Nader was not a factor in any state, receiving just 2 percent of the total vote, topping out with 6.25 percent of the vote in Nebraska and 6.06 percent in Arizona. The primary reason senior managers cited for voting for Bush is the war on terror, while those expressing support for Kerry cited the economy as the key issue. Bush or Kerry? The survey was conducted online jointly between The NonProfit Times and technology provider Kintera. Nonprofit senior executives were asked about their choice in the forthcoming presidential election and reasons for making their decision. The NonProfit Times sent emails to readers known to be senior managers, directing them to a link on a Web page where they could vote and share their opinions. The email also assured executives that responding would not lead to any solicitation or marketing follow-up communications. There were 2,121 responses. Not surprising, given the demographic of nonprofit senior management, Kerry was the overwhelming victor in the raw vote. The votes were then sorted by state into three categories: solidly Republican, solidly Democrat, and swing states. The partitioning used was the one in Slate online magazine, http://slate.msn.com/id/2103314/. The 19 solidly Republican states, accounting for 161 electoral votes, gave Bush 34.5 percent of the votes and Kerry 62.6 percent in the NPT/Kintera poll. The nine solidly Democrat states and Washington, D.C., accounting for 150 electoral votes, gave Bush 19 percent of the votes and Kerry 77 percent. One would expect the swing states to give Bush and Kerry percentages somewhat in the middle of the extreme ranges -- namely, 24 to 29 percent for Bush and 67 to 72 percent for Kerry. But the 22 swing states, accounting for 227 electoral votes, gave Bush 30.2 percent of the vote and Kerry 67 percent. Thus, in the swing states, Bush exceeded expectations and Kerry came in at the very low end of expected results. More ominous for Kerry, the nine swing states that give Bush 32.5 percent of the vote or better account for 116 electoral votes, more than the 108 he needs to append to his Republican states' tally to win the election. The survey also segmented the votes by sector categories. There are no surprises: Kerry won every sector except religion, where the president has been trumpeting his faith-based and community initiative program. Environmental and animal welfare executives voted for Kerry by a ratio of more than 7-to-1. The religious sector is very under represented in the responses, which adds to the enormous pro-Kerry skew in overall voting. The hot issues Of those who cited "the economy and jobs" as the number one issue motivating their vote, 76.7 percent voted for Kerry and 20 percent for Bush. Nobody in the survey voted "immigration" as the number one concern. The most striking result is the high voting percentage Bush received from those who identify "terrorism" as the number one issue. This result seems out of kilter with the rest of the data. The even split of voters who identify "same sex marriage" as the number one issue is statistically less relevant because it involves so few voters. Comparing the data regarding the issues by candidate and then by distribution across various issues, of those who voted for Bush, 24.3 percent cited "the economy and jobs" as their number one issue motivating their vote and 16.4 percent cited "the war in Iraq." With this view, the number one reason cited by Kerry supporters, the war in Iraq, is fourth with the Bush supporters. Even more dramatic is that the number one reason cited by the Bush supporters -- terrorism -- is almost absent from the Kerry responders. As mentioned before, this gross, apparent aberration between war and terrorism seems to be the single most striking result of this survey. Of course, statistically, with samples of more than 2,000 from across the country, this cannot be an accident, so deeper analysis was undertaken. The sums of percentages for "the war in Iraq" and "terrorism" are very close -- 45.6 percent for the Bush supporters, 44.3 percent for the Kerry supporters. These two issues are clearly related, and perhaps voters are actually prioritizing subcontexts of one big issue, "terrorism and a war purportedly waged to contain terrorism" (T&W). In this context, the T&W issue is more a motivator than "the economy and jobs" in both camps. T&W garnered 44.2 percent of the votes with Bush supporters and 38.8 percent with the Kerry supporters. The higher percent for T&W with Bush is because the economy and jobs have somewhat more weight with the Kerry crowd. As for terrorism and the war, Bush supporters slanted their T&W view to terrorism and only reluctantly admitted the war component. Kerry supporters are adamant about highlighting their view that the war is not helping to contain terrorism and is therefore wasteful and wrong. It seems that voters' motivation to prioritize the components in the T&W issue could be motivated by their predisposition to vote either Republican or Democrat. The numbers show a slight prejudice (relative to the average) in favor of Bush with both very large and very small organizations, and a counter prejudice in favor of Kerry for those organizations in the middle. For example, voters from organizations with revenues greater than $20 million gave Bush 31.5 percent of the vote and Kerry 65.2 percent. Except for the smallest organizations, each category of entries comprised more than 100 votes, so these results, while not overwhelming, cannot be dismissed. Finally, private foundations also exhibit a prejudice in favor of Bush compared to the mean, while public charities exhibit a slight shift in favor of Kerry.
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