There's got to be a morning after

Just Call Them Poll-arized

By Rick Horowitz

It's all over but the counting. And the recounting. And the lawsuits. Election Day 2004 has come and gone -- and not a moment too soon! As a weary America tries to make sense of the results, we're here as always, to shed a little light on the highs and lows of this campaign season.

That's right, friends -- it's time once again for the Ten-Foot Poll, this factionalized nation's most fictionalized exit survey. Our pinpoint questioning of 1,361 randomly invented Republicans, Democrats and independents has yielded insights you simply won't find anywhere else.

The overall mood of the voters this year? Sour. Not surprising for a presidential contest that saw the two leading candidates within spitting distance of one another for month after month, we found the electorate -- not to mention the expectorate -- deeply divided. For instance, voters who preferred...

The smirking, strutting, pig-headed, semi-literate frat boy who never admits he's wrong and thinks he hears God's voice through his fillings: 49.2%

The wine-sipping, blow-dried, stiff-as-a-board flip-flopper who considers all the angles before he chooses his socks and wouldn't know a simple declarative sentence if it walked up and bit him in the butt: 48.6%

All this negativity came despite efforts to soften the tone of campaign rhetoric, especially in television and radio commercials. These efforts were, it appears, only partly successful. For example, when voters heard the words "I approve this message," they...

Listened more closely: 25%

Remembered more clearly: 18%

Got the children out of the room: 57%

It's not surprising, then, that voters had very different -- and very sobering -- views of the world, and of the problems the next president will face. Asked, for instance, to identify the individual or individuals who posed the greatest threat to our national security over the next four years, our respondents most frequently mentioned:

Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda terrorist network: 29%

Iraqi insurgents and supporters of Saddam Hussein: 21%

John Ashcroft: 19%

Whoopi Goldberg: 14%

Those two nice young men who share the house down the block: 12%

The gnome in those Travelocity ads: 5%

The media's performance during the campaign was also a source of great frustration to many voters. Fully 79% of Democrats in our survey thought the major networks and cable news channels devoted too little time to the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and to criminal allegations concerning Vice President Cheney's old firm, Halliburton. Likewise, 81% of Republicans would have preferred wall-to-wall coverage of Teresa Heinz Kerry.

In addition, voters were frustrated by the media's inability to do a better job of fact-checking the candidates' statements, and their charges against their opponents. A particular source of concern was the quote taken out of context, an increasingly common practice which our respondents variously described as...

"Very disturbing": 30%

"Extremely...upsetting": 22%

"They...should all...be...bo...ile...d": 48%

On the other hand, for all the dissatisfaction with the coverage, our respondents were able to hear and retain the campaigns' central messages and images. In each of the following cases, for instance, a majority of our respondents was able to match the concepts with the characters most closely associated with them.

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it": John Kerry

"Mission Accomplished": George W. Bush

"The son of a mill worker": John Edwards

"A few bad apples": Fox News

Finally, with Campaign 2004 now headed for the history books, the first stirrings of Campaign 2008 can already be heard in the land. However, if our numbers are any indication, that may be a tough sell for the next year or two. In fact, faced with the prospect of another presidential campaign starting any time soon, our respondents said they preferred:

A break: 17%

Asylum: 22%

A shotgun: 61%

Posted 11/2/04. Get award-winning commentary from syndicated columnist Rick Horowitz twice every week.

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist, TV commentator, writing coach and public speaker.

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