GARY HERSHORN / REUTERS

President Bush arrives to deliver his victory speech

Later, in his concession speech, Kerry spoke of the "danger of division in our country and the desperate need for unity," pledging to "do my part to bridge the partisan divide," and imploring his supporters to do the same. President Bush, in his victory speech, addressed himself to Kerry voters: "To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust. A new term is a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. We have one country, one Constitution, and one future that binds us."

The President could certainly afford magnanimity. His margin of victory lays to rest the ghosts of 2000, when he had lost the popular vote and prevailed only on the basis of a highly contested Florida count. And the margin of victory will be all the more satisfying to his campaign chiefs given its improbability — the President had entered the home straight carrying a negative approval rating, making his achievement all the more remarkable. In the process, Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove may have rewritten the book on electioneering, dispatching article after article of conventional wisdom into the shredder.

Pundits had spent Election Day predicting that the increased voter turnout would, in keeping with conventional wisdom, turn things in Kerry's favor. Boosting the turnout in Pennsylvania's cities may indeed have helped the Democrats hold the state, but in Florida the reverse proved true: The Sunshine State saw 1.4 million more voters go to the polls than had turned out in 2000, and the result was to increase President Bush's margin of victory there by upward of 375,000 votes.

The pollsters' post-mortem on Election 2004 will also shine an unforgiving light on some of the Democrats core campaign assumptions. Since the Democratic primary season, Kerry had been pulled between the poles of the Howard Dean faction of his party insisting that he run against the war, and its centrist establishment personified by the likes of former President Bill Clinton, who had advised Kerry to campaign as if the war was won and the economy was booming, instead making health care and education his signature issues. Though the Kerry-Edwards campaign became something of a hybrid of the two approaches, neither option resonated sufficiently with this year's electorate — the single issue that had the most traction among voters surveyed in exit polls was not Iraq, or terrorism, or health care or the economy; it was "moral values." And the margin of victory for ballot initiatives rejecting same-sex marriage in 11 states suggests that an issue at best peripheral to the Democratic agenda may nonetheless have played a significant role in shaping voter perceptions of the Kerry-Edwards ticket, and in trimming its congressional coattails.

President Bush's victory aims other blows at conventional electoral lore. According to exit polling information, Bush performed strongly among women voters, for example, and raised his share of the Hispanic vote by 7 percent to take 42 percent of what had once been regarded as a Democratic core constituency. President Bush even increased his share of the black vote by some 2 percent, although that took him only to an 11 percent share of the total.

Other demographic trends remained consistent. President Bush thumped Kerry in rural areas, narrowly shaded him in the suburbs and they split cities with populations of less than a half million people. And Kerry beat Bush by an almost two-to-one margin in the big cities.

While "moral issues" topped the list of concerns raised by voters (22 percent), 20 percent cited the economy, 19 percent terrorism and only 15 percent cited Iraq as the leading issue shaping their choice. But the data also shows an even split among voters in their judgment on which candidate would make a better steward of the economy, and an almost two-to-one advantage for Bush on the question of who would best handle the threat of terrorism.

Kerry's appeal to Bush to reach out across the partisan divide begs the question of how the President plans to govern on his second term. Seeking bipartisan consensus was hardly a priority of the first Bush administration — even though the President had actually lost the popular vote and many Americans had questioned the extent of the mandate created by an election settled in the Supreme Court. George W. Bush took the reins of power with the confidence and certainty of one who had carried a landslide mandate to implement his own agenda. This time, of course, his claim of a popular mandate is incontrovertible. His party has strengthened its grip on both branches of the legislature, and freed of any first-term restraints that might be thrown up by reelection concerns, President George W. Bush is well positioned to even more vigorously pursue his agenda.

Still, there may be other factors pulling Bush in a more conciliatory direction. For one thing, this time he can go there from a position of strength — gestures of bi-partisanship can't possibly be construed, at this point, as tacit admission of a limited mandate (as they might have been early in 2001). Like all presidents, Bush will prefer to be remembered as a great national leader of all Americans, rather than simply as a great leader of his own party. And his administration may need all the help and goodwill it can muster in order to deal with the ongoing national security crises in Iraq and elsewhere, and with the challenges of adapting America's economy and society to the demands of an uncertain age.

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