Nov. 9, 2004. 01:00 AM

What the numbers behind Bush victory tell us

STEPHEN HANDELMAN

Now that the shock and awe have faded, it's time to give George W. Bush his due. He won a decisive victory last week, and the hand-wringing ought to give way to a more sophisticated understanding of the American political landscape.

Has the U.S. turned hard right? Not exactly. Some 55 million Americans voted for John Kerry and a decisive majority (55 per cent) told pollsters on the eve of the election that they believed the U.S. was headed in the wrong direction under the Bush administration.

A post-election survey turned up some interesting figures. The Democrats trounced Republicans (by 60 per cent to 39 per cent) in U.S. cities larger than 500,000 population, and came dead even in urban areas with populations larger than 50,000.

Another figure: Kerry won 54 per cent of the vote among young Americans aged 18 to 29.

In a widely circulated e-mail, filmmaker Michael Moore reminded people that Kerry's total vote was larger than the number of Americans who voted for Ronald Reagan and Al Gore. "If the media are looking for a trend, it should be this," he wrote. "So many Americans were, for the first time since Kennedy, willing to vote for an out-and-out liberal."

That doesn't make it any easier. In the tiny island of Manhattan, it's hard to find people who don't feel they have woken up in a foreign country. At dinner parties in the media-heavy Upper West Side, faces are funereal: "If Democrats couldn't win this election, I don't understand America," one distraught professional told me.

So who's to blame? Even asking the question makes clear why it's worth rethinking what makes this country tick.

It's true that a surge of voting from so-called Christian evangelical voters turned the tide in Ohio last week. And millions of Americans in exit-poll surveys said they identified with Bush's appeal to "values" — religious, patriotic, and otherwise.

But what seems indisputable is that more Americans, in an uncomfortable time, felt deeply insecure and vulnerable. That's very far from the picture of primitive, gun-toting, evolution-scorning backwoodsmen that excites condescension abroad.

The U.S. is divided, no doubt about it, but the divisions are not easily caricatured. Americans may be worried about the war in Iraq, but sizeable numbers remain convinced that battling "terrorism" there keeps the terrorists away from their shores.

Americans, according to most polls, are generally tolerant and open to the world (even to the United Nations) but they also feel challenged by what they consider assaults on their moral convictions.

The rest is here: Toronto Star