2 key statements in Mr. Taranto's Article below:

1. "Bush's popular-vote total, more than 58 million, is the MOST EVER for a
presidential candidate, and is an improvement of at least eight million over
his 2000 vote total"

2. " At this writing, Bush has 51.1% nationwide to Kerry's 48%. This makes
Bush THE FIRST presidential nominee to achieve a popular-vote majority since
his father in 1988" (16 years).

Both Presidential wins by Ronald Regan were said to be a landslide. How much
more a landslide for George W. Bush.

*********** Original article from AP Wires in January is below WSJ Article
***************
 

BY JAMES TARANTO
Wall Street Journal
Wednesday, November 3, 2004 4:02 p.m. EST

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005843

A Clean Win
So it wasn't another 2000 after all. Late this morning, John Kerry called
President Bush to concede--less than 18 hours after the first polls closed.
A few hours later, Kerry delivered a gracious if overlong concession speech.

Last night, after considering a challenge in Ohio, Kerry apparently slept on
it and woke up to the realization that it would be futile. The official Ohio
returns give the president a lead of more than 136,000 votes, or 2.49% of
the vote--but without provisional ballots, those cast by voters whose
registration is in doubt.

There were enough such ballots that they could theoretically have changed
the outcome, but few enough that the likelihood of their having done so was
minuscule. Blogger "Atilla" does the math and concludes that if there had
been 250,000 valid provisional ballots, Kerry would have had to win 77.2% of
them to take the lead; a more realistic (though probably still high) figure
of 150,000 yields 95.3% as the requisite Kerry percentage. As Michael Barone
noted in a 5 a.m. posting, when the president's lead was 10,000 votes fewer,
"Provisional votes are not concentrated totally in central city Cleveland.
They are cast, also, by Amish voters in Holmes and Coshocton Counties. They
are not going to produce a 126,000-vote margin for Kerry, under any stretch
of the imagination."

Kerry could have stretched out the count by days, and perhaps filed lawsuits
if the count hadn't gone his way, but to do so would have been an act of
supreme vanity and been terribly destructive to the Democratic Party. Unlike
in 2000, Bush's lead in the pivotal state wasn't close. And Kerry could not
have claimed the moral authority of having "won the popular vote," as Al
Gore did. At this writing, Bush has 51.1% nationwide to Kerry's 48%. This
makes Bush the first presidential nominee to achieve a popular-vote majority
since his father in 1988.

Yet the Electoral College map looks nearly identical to 2000's, with Kerry
winning the entire Northeast, the West Coast and Hawaii, and most of the
Upper Midwest:

The president leads narrowly in Iowa and New Mexico--both states Al Gore
carried--so he could end up with a 286-252 victory. New Hampshire switched
from Bush to Kerry; the other 47 states and the District of Columbia went
for the same party as in 2000. We've given the state-by-state results only a
cursory look, but it appears as though Bush's improvement in the popular
vote--from a margin of minus 0.5% to 3.1%--is owing largely to narrower
margins of defeat in blue states.

Most news organizations--Fox News Channel and NBC are the main
exceptions--held off from calling Ohio for Bush, out of either an excess of
caution or, as blogger Jay Cost argues, political bias. In support of the
bias theory, Cost notes that Kerry's margin of victory in Pennsylvania--both
the number of votes and the percentage--was smaller than Bush's in Ohio, yet
the networks called the Keystone State fairly early.

Bush's popular-vote total, more than 58 million, is the most ever for a
presidential candidate, and is an improvement of at least eight million over
his 2000 vote total. That means that if Karl Rove got his four million
Evangelical Christians, Bush brought in at least an additional four million
new voters or Gore voters. Exit polls show that 37% of voters identified
themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans; in 2000, the figure was 39%
Dems and 35% GOP.

This shift may reflect what we call "9/11 Republicans," Americans who used
to vote Democratic but cannot abide the party's weakness on national
security. The Jerusalem Post looks at a subset of this group:

The American Jewish Committee, in a tiny sampling of roughly 200 Jewish
voters in five battleground states, found roughly 12 to 13 percent of Jews
who voted for Al Gore in 2000 switched parties and cast their vote for
President George W. Bush on Tuesday. . . .

Bush won 19% and Gore 80% of the Jewish vote in 2000, according to exit
polling. An AJC survey of American Jewish voters in September found 69%
would support Kerry and 24% Bush. AJC's Tuesday results suggested slightly
stronger gains for Bush in the community.

Harris said that nearly all voters who switched from Gore to Bush
"identified either Israel or terrorism (and) 9/11 as the first reason for
their decision."

One promise that doesn't seem to have panned out for the GOP is a
substantial increase in black support. The exit poll found Bush taking only
11% of the black vote, up a mere two percentage points since 2000.

Have You Seen Me?
Maybe Democrats should start advertising for voters on the sides of milk
cartons. Poor Josh Marshall spent last night wondering what happened to all
those youngsters who were supposed to come out for Kerry:

One thing that does seem very clear tonight--at least if what I'm hearing
from the exits is true--is that the much-ballyhooed youth vote simply did
not show up. Simple as that.

That is a remarkable turnabout from the expectations that had been growing
over the last week. And Democrats weren't the only ones who bought into the
idea. Public pollsters and even Republicans in the final days of the
campaign were coming to believe it too. And that shaped expectations
greatly.

Whatever happens tonight a lot of thought and study will go into just what
happened. Was it a mirage? Was it a problem with the GOTV operation? It
can't simply be the later. Even the best ground operation can only amplify a
demographic trend or spike that has some deeper socio-political basis.

Gee, what might've happened to all the young voters? Well, consider this:
You're not allowed to vote unless you've passed your 18th birthday. In order
to have any birthdays at all, you have to have been born. And over the past
30 years or so, many Americans have ended up not being born.

About.com lists the number of abortions in the U.S. each year starting in
1973, "based on assumptions by the Alan Guttmacher Institute." If we add up
the numbers from 1975-86, we come up with approximately 17.5 million missing
eligible voters between 18 and 29 years old. Exit polls found that voters
this age who were born went for Kerry over Bush, 54% to 45%, while Bush had
a majority in all other age groups. If it's true that women who have
abortions tend to be more liberal than those who don't, then the unborn 18-
to 29-year-olds likely would have favored the Democrat even more heavily.

Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision mandating legal abortion nationwide, was
written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a Nixon appointee. Perhaps somewhere old
Tricky Dick is smiling at how his judicial legacy helped the Republicans.

All This and Coattails Too
As it turned out, there were nine key Senate races, all in states Bush won,
with the late addition of Kentucky's Sen. Jim Bunning as a vulnerable
incumbent. Republicans swept eight of them, losing only in Colorado, where
Democrat Ken Salazar beat Pete Coors. The biggest prize was in South Dakota,
where ex-Rep. John Thune knocked off Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
Republicans also picked up seats in Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and
South Carolina and held them in Alaska, Kentucky and Oklahoma. Each party
picked up an additional seat in a race that wasn't expected to be close:
Democrat Barack Obama in Illinois and Republican Johnny Isakson in Georgia.

Result: The 109th Congress will feature a 55-45 GOP Senate majority, a net
gain of four seats. Could this be the end of obstructionism? Daschle has
done a very effective job of keeping his party unified to filibuster
Republican legislation and especially judicial nominees. Ending a filibuster
requires 60 votes, which means the GOP now need pick off only five Dems
rather than nine. And Daschle's defeat may send a message to other red-state
Democrats, of whom there are at least 14:
 

Pat Robertson: God told him it's Bush in a 'blowout'

By SONJA BARISIC
Associated Press Writer

January 2 2004

NORFOLK, Va. -- Pat Robertson said Friday that God told him President Bush
will be re-elected in a landslide.

"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," the religious broadcaster
said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian
Broadcasting Network, which he founded.

"I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout
election in 2004. It's shaping up that way," Robertson said.

"The Lord has just blessed him," Robertson said of Bush. "I mean, he could
make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference
what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and
God's blessing him."

Earlier on the program, Robertson had explained that he wanted to share
"some of the things that I believe the Lord was showing me as I spent
several days in prayer at the end of 2003."

Robertson also said that this year will be one of "extraordinary prosperity"
and that God will bless China in 2004 "in a way it's never known before."

"God loves China and he loves the Chinese people," Robertson said. "I
believe there's going to be an unbelievable spiritual revival taking place
in China this year."

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, a frequent Robertson critic and executive director
of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he had a
prediction of his own.

"I predict that Pat Robertson in 2004 will continue to use his multimillion
broadcasting empire to promote George Bush and other Republican candidates,"
Lynn said in a statement. "Maybe Pat got a message from (Bush political
adviser) Karl Rove and thought it was from God."

Maranatha,
David
www.soudanalarm.net