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Monday, January 24, 2005
Presidential vote pattern same as 2000
Inside Washington

By Carl Weiser
Gannett news service

Now that electoral votes have officially been counted in Congress, the lawsuits have been dismissed and President Bush actually sworn in, the true story of the 2004 election in Ohio can actually be told: It was a rerun of 2000.

Red stayed red and blue stayed blue. That's because people rarely change their deep political beliefs. It's that boring.

First the surveys: As a National Annenberg Election Survey earlier this month showed, very few Americans changed their minds during the 2004 campaign. Only 16 percent of Bush voters said there was ever a time when they considered Kerry and only 15 percent of Kerry voters considered the other guy.

Now the election results: Among the states, 47 voted for the same party they picked in 2000. Only New Mexico, Iowa, and New Hampshire flipped. (The first two went from blue to red, the last from red to blue.) They'd all been very, very close in 2000.

In election-determining Ohio, out of 88 counties, only two flipped, and washed each other out. (Handily, they rhyme: Clark and Stark.) Clark (Springfield's county) flipped from Kerry to Bush. Stark (Canton's county) flipped from Bush to Kerry.

Most counties voted just about the way they voted in 2000. The key was those fast-growing red exurban counties. The Bush campaign knew it needed only to increase his numbers a few ticks in those counties to win.

And which counties saw the biggest increase in victory margin for Bush from 2000 to 2004? Butler, Warren and Clermont. They increased their support of Bush by a few percentage points each. But in raw numbers of votes, they made the difference.

From 2000 to 2004, Bush increased his victory margin in Butler County by 13,432 votes; in Warren County by 12,817 votes; and in Clermont County by 10,860 votes.

Kerry's top gainers? Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton counties.

So red stayed red and blue stayed blue. But in general, the big red counties are gaining people. And the big blue counties are losing population. And that's how Bush won Ohio.

Hellooo, we elected you. How 'bout some jobs?

Bush keeps rejecting local men for jobs in his administration - at least, if you believe the short lists of names that get floated for various jobs.

Earlier this month, Bush named a new Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff. But that meant he passed over Indian Hill native Joe Hagin, whose name had surfaced as one of about a dozen possible nominees for the job.

Hagin's advantage: as deputy White House chief of staff, he'd already been thoroughly vetted by the administration, thus avoiding any Bernard Kerik-type embarrassment.

Bush also named a new chief liaison to Congress, a position for which West Chester native Barry Jackson's name had popped up.

And of course Indian Hill's Mercer Reynolds is not the secretary of commerce.

They said it

"Mercer is really his nickname. His real name is Merciless."
- Al Hoffman of Florida, a $100,000 contributor to the inauguration, on Indian Hill's Mercer Reynolds' perseverance as a fund-raiser, as quoted in the New York Times.

E-mail cweiser@gannett.com