emember 2000? The nation was seemingly prosperous, with the federal government running surpluses and the impact of the dot-com bust not yet clear. Enron? Good company. The nation was at peace and apparently secure—though far, far less so than most believed. There was a presidential election that year, during which both parties aimed for the political center. In hindsight, that election was about almost nothing in particular; the most compelling issue was the moral character of the candidates (and the departing two-term incumbent).

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By comparison, the 2004 election is about everything: America’s role in fighting terrorism, homeland security, the economy, education funding, free trade and labor, prescription-drug insurance, gas prices, the definition of marriage, and (again) the moral character of the candidates.

With the election five months away, the issues are more pressing, the candidates are more assertive, and the parties are more easily distinguished from one another than seen in decades. Most significant of all, the electorate is also deeply divided on those issues and about those candidates.

In early March, the first television advertisements from President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign hit the airwaves. The ads featured vivid 9/11 imagery: smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center twin towers with a flag flying in the rubble; firefighters carrying a flag-draped stretcher. The message: George W. Bush is a war-time president who responded during one of America’s darkest moments and provides steady leadership in times of uncertainty.

Aside from the early questions of their appropriateness—some firefighters and families of 9/11 victims objected—the ads offered a clear indication that things had changed on the political landscape. Whether you embraced the messages as an inspiring and appropriate portrayal of a president whose challenges as a leader are largely related to national security and foreign policy in the wake of unprovoked attacks, or rejected them as an opportunistic use of a national tragedy for political gain by a president beholden to business interests, you probably had an opinion. In that respect, you weren’t alone.

“This is the most deeply divided electorate in the post-World War II era,” says David Bennett, Meredith Professor of History at the ­Max­well School. “There’s no centrism here.”

Research backs Bennett up. The Pew Research Center report on the 2004 political land­scape—which measures basic political, economic, and social values—shows that polarization is as great as it’s been at any time since Pew began surveying public opinion in 1987. And a March Gallup Poll reported that the electorate is more polarized than at any time since Gallup began measuring presidential job approval by party in 1948.

The polarization is evidenced by (and perhaps exacerbated by) the candidates themselves, providing voters with clear choices that reflect their parties’ different visions for America. Bush, arguably one of the most conservative presidents since the 1920s, launched a pre-emptive war in Iraq and backs tax cuts, Social Security privatization, free trade to promote growth (regardless of short-term effects on the job market), and a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who has one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate, is a Vietnam combat veteran critical of the war in Iraq. He says he’d raise taxes on those who make more than $200,000 a year, expand health care to the uninsured, restrict trade to protect jobs regardless of higher prices for imported goods, and leave it to states to ban or allow gay marriage.

“Everyone always says that politicians don’t really stand for anything, but that’s certainly not the case this year,” observes Jeffrey Stonecash, chair of the Maxwell School political science department. “There is a deep ideological division.”

However, the candidates have not caused electorate polarity; it’s more likely the other way around. According to experts, the roots of this great divide easily predate George Bush and John Kerry. They’re buried in presidential history that goes back seven decades, and in demographic changes a century in the making.

re we really so divided in 2004? Are things that different from 10 years ago, or 20? It became evident when, early in the primary season, we began to encounter a term that was new, at least to the general public: electability.

It has a loaded definition. After all, don’t parties always prefer to pick candidates “able to get elected”? But when a party focuses overtly and chiefly on electability, that party demonstrates that it is willing (apparently) to subordinate all other priorities to that one concern. That is what seems to have happened in 2004, when electability became the chief reason John Kerry emerged from the Democratic pack, and the chief reservation about rival Howard Dean.

“I can’t think of a time when a party sought someone who wasn’t electable,” says Rogan Kersh, associate professor of political science and frequent media commentator on American politics. “The difference this time is that ‘electability’ was so far out in front of the ideological differences and particular policy views that you normally hear about during primary elections. What came out as important in the polls was beating Bush. ‘Anybody but Bush.’”

There was some precedent in 2000. Moderate Republicans were less enamored of George W. Bush, analysts say, than of his potential to unite the Republican electorate while drawing independent voters; this year, the Democrats seem to be operating on the same, though reciprocal, set of values.

In both 2000 and 2004, the intense focus on “beating the other guy” may reflect little more than who the other guy is. Many feel that, in 2000, Al Gore ostensibly stood as the incumbent, inheriting the Clinton legacy; and, for a variety of reasons (personal ethics chief among them), Bill Clinton engendered especially strong resentment among many Republicans and/or conservatives. Now the shoe is clearly on the other foot.

“I don’t think we’ve seen this much unified dislike, distrust, and dismay among Democrats since Richard Nixon and Watergate,” Kersh says. “There is a focused intensity in the Democratic electorate about getting this guy out of office that’s even more intense than the Republican animus toward Bill Clinton.”

Some view the 2004 edition of George Bush as different from the 2000 variety. In his first campaign, Bush presented himself as a centrist, but, according to Stonecash, he has since earned a reputation as a staunch conservative. “There is no president I remember who has gone more fully to one side, and with no apologies,” he reflects. “For a guy who campaigned in 2000 as a ‘compassionate’ conservative, there’s been almost no reaching across the middle.”

islike for the incumbent, however, is hardly the only explanation for voter division. For example, again in 2004 there is potential for the election to change party control not just of the White House, but both chambers of Congress. “You don’t usually get all three parts of government up for grabs,” notes Kersh. “When you do, there is a heightened anxiety, urgency, and drama. It makes for a kind of ‘perfect storm’ effect that makes the election a lot more interesting.”

There may be even larger trends taking hold—for example, the constancy and intensity of media attention. Between print, the Internet, an ever-growing number of television stations, and talk radio, the chattering class grows bigger and louder by the minute. Each move that a candidate makes is magnified, analyzed, and subjected to Sunday talk and late-night jokes.

No wonder the parties aspire to minimize the initial fray and then pick the well-armored candidate. Whereas state primaries and caucuses were once conducted over three to four months, the nomination process this year was condensed to five weeks. Democratic Party chairman Terry McAuliffe deliberately set up a front-loaded primary calendar to produce a quick winner. By choosing a nominee as early as possible, the party would have more time to raise money and compete head-to-head with Bush.

The strategy could backfire, according to Kersh: “The Republicans have a much longer time now to reframe John Kerry as someone you couldn’t stand voting for as long as you lived.”

The extension of the presidential campaign—post-primary, one-on-one—is a trend political scientist Robert McClure calls “unhealthy.” As campaigns become longer and longer, “they become about everything and, as a result, about nothing,” says McClure, professor of political science and public affairs. “This election is critically important about the directions this country takes, but the real issues will get lost as every possible interest group claim comes to the forefront and divides our attention.”

Both the press and the public expect access to leaders, but such relentless access is counter-productive. “When politicians are in campaign mode, we tempt them to pander. They’d be rude if they didn’t pander,” McClure admits. “To the degree that the campaign mode becomes the standard operating mode all the time, all a president can do is pander.”

And as campaigns get longer, the incumbent president and his challenger become involved in partisan political debate for extended periods. “As we campaign longer and longer, we govern less and less,” says McClure. “As a public, we presume the government needs to do more and more, but we’re engaged in a process in which campaigning intrudes so much nothing gets accomplished.”

o find the deepest roots of electorate divisions, you have to plumb history. According to David Bennett, voters in 2004 sense a watershed moment in a battle that has rumbled since the Depression. “This is an election in which large numbers of passionate Democrats believe the political landscape of a generation will be changed irreparably if we have a veto-less Congress,” he notes.

The conservatism that colors the Republican Party is part of a backlash against Democratic New Deal policies dating back to the 1930s, according to Bennett. Bush vs. Kerry, like Carter vs. Reagan, can be viewed in the template of Franklin Roosevelt vs. Herbert Hoover. “Hoover certainly felt that Roosevelt could be leading America down the wrong path,” says Bennett. “After the New Deal was put in place, it was clear to Hooverian Republicans that this was a dramatic departure in American life.”

Nonetheless, Roosevelt proved triumphant, and Republicans who directly challenged New Deal-style social welfare programs were rare and largely unsuccessful. In the election of 1964—certainly an election colored by ideology—Barry Goldwater challenged incumbent Lyndon Johnson by calling for deep cuts in social programs and suggesting Social Security become voluntary. (Of course, Goldwater also infamously proposed the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam.) Johnson won by a landslide. The Democratic majority in the House and Senate allowed for a run of legislative victories not seen since the first term of the Roosevelt administration. “The Republicans had always been deeply disturbed by the New Deal, and LBJ’s Great Society just took that hostility to another level,” Bennett points out.

Ronald Reagan’s defeat of incumbent Jimmy Carter—in the wake of the Iran hostage crisis, an oil shortage, and record inflation and unemployment—continued the same feud. “Reagan’s victory was not so much an embrace of his policies but an endorsement of the belief that Democratic Party policies had led to the dismal defeats the United States suffered in the 1970s,” Bennett says. “He represented a Hooverian ideal and a mission to repeal the federal programs of the Great Society.”

Hoover vs. Roosevelt haunts American politics still, especially at the federal level. The intensity of the 2004 clash is simply the latest jerk in a much larger tug of war.

“Many Democrats argue that government should do more to help the less affluent with government programs to provide day care for workers, job training for those struggling to adapt to a changing economy, and more grants to attend college,” says Stone­cash. “Many Republicans, emphasizing the need to keep taxes low, oppose government programs and stress the importance of individual responsibility and accountability as the routes to success in American society.

“This election’s not going to settle anything,” he adds. “It’s going to leave all sorts of people on opposite sides bitterly opposed to each other.”

eanwhile, as the thrust and parry of post-New Deal ideology plays out, profound changes in demography also color the landscape. According to Stonecash, currently at work on a book about party polarization in Congress, much of today’s division in the electorate reflects a century of electoral-base realignment. In the early 1900s, he says, the parties were mostly split along regional lines: the South was largely Democrat while the

North was primarily Republican. By the 1940s, the Democratic Party was a mix of urban liberals and Southern conservatives. By the 1960s, however, the division had become increasingly ideological, as conservative Democrats moved to the Republican Party. Less diversity within each party leads to increased polarization.

Also, immigration and other population trends have altered the racial/ethnic make-up of the electorate. Today, more than half of House districts are made up of 20 percent or more nonwhites; a third have 30 percent or more. “Once they get over 20 to 25 percent nonwhite, they invariably go Democratic,” says Stonecash.

Black participation in American politics has risen dramatically since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and, as a group, black voters still lean leftward. “Black voters have become a larger percentage of the Democratic base and have provided a base within the Democratic Party to push it in a more liberal direction,” he says.

Stonecash says Democrats now have the most success winning seats in districts that are urban and whose constituents are non-white or less affluent, while Republicans derive more of their seats from districts that are predominantly white and relatively affluent, primarily in rural and suburban districts. 

Researching national election data for his 2000 book Class and Party in American Politics, Stonecash found that class divisions in voting have grown steadily since the 1970s, at the same time economic inequality in the United States has grown. As much as any observation, this suggests that the intensity of recent campaigns reflects something built into the culture—far more significant than any one candidate’s style or alleged rigging of the primary schedule.

“This election is very reflective of the divisions in American society,” he says. “We have a polarized election because these candidates are responding to very different groups of people.”

ar. The war against terrorism and the war in Iraq—possibly related, possibly not, depending on whom you ask—color this year’s election, certainly contributing to divisions in the electorate.

The ultimate impact, though, is anyone’s guess. As a nation, America was united in patriotism after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. For the Bush administration, 9/11 is a defining experience, says McClure. “For them, this election is about terrorism, about the war in Iraq, about national security. Nearly everything they do is done with the purpose of never having another 9/11,” he says.

An oft-stated assumption is that war makes a president undefeatable. Last fall, who could have imagined that President Bush could possibly lose re-election? According to McClure, though, the oft-stated assumption is usually wrong. “In fact, presiding over war is quite problematic. War didn’t help Johnson. War didn’t help Truman. War almost cost Abraham Lincoln re-election,” he asserts. “To have won a war, à la Eisenhower or Grant, is a political advantage, but to be in the midst of a war is dangerous political territory.” While launched on an ocean of patriotism, war proves messy, as Iraq has demonstrated again.

One thing is clear. The electorate views 9/11 through very different lenses, as witnessed by reaction to those first Bush campaign ads.

“The Bush administration is trying to frame 9/11 as having changed everything about how America operates,” says Kristi Andersen, Meredith Professor of Political Science and Maxwell Professor of Teaching Excellence. “The Democrats and John Kerry are trying to frame it as a neutral event that was tragic for the U.S., but led the Bush administration to go off in a direction that is counter to what America should stand for. They’re trying to de-couple 9/11 and the war in Iraq while the Bush campaign is trying hard to connect them.

“When a large percentage of the campaign is taken up with 9/11,” she adds, “Kerry has less of an opportunity to talk about jobs, trade, education, health care, Social Security, and the deficit—all of which are issues that the Democrats should be strong on.”

n recent history, presidential elections have been won by the candidate who attracts voters in the middle—those willing to defy their party registration and those who are unaffiliated with a party. For that reason, candidates in the recent past have tried to blur the differences between parties. Witness Clinton’s support for welfare reform and Bush’s for compassionate conservatism.

This year, though, the candidates are pitching hard to their own ends of the political spectrum, as if very few voters occupy the middle. It’s a different strategy, and the outcome is very much in doubt. None of our experts expects anything other than a very tight election in November. And, regardless of the outcome, none predicts that the electorate will emerge any less divided. 

“There’s a huge gulf and it’s growing," says Robert McClure. “Those who think this election will settle—for the long term—whether the red states or the blue states win are way off base.”