First Afterthoughts As I sit down to write this commentary, a mere two days after the election, I wonder whether a political scientist has anything to say in the immediate aftermath of an election different from what has been said by political journalists. I think we do. What we have to say to our students is: look for evidence. The post-election read on why the Republicans did so well relates to the campaigning of President Bush. I think that analysis is right, but I do not think many analysts know why. I have looked at the election in two ways. First, what was the President’s contribution to the Republican campaigns? He contributed in four ways. He recruited candidates for key races, often facing long odds; and they did very well. Senators-elect Norm Coleman (MN) and Saxby Chambill (GA) are prime examples. He raised over $140 million for Republican candidates, an enormous sum; and his fundraising for individual candidates also signaled that those candidates had the President’s ear, an important message for voters to hear. Third, his chief political operative, Karl Rove, set the strategy for the campaign; Republicans gained when they talked about issues of security and lost when they talked about the economy. He convinced them to reverse the strategy that had been successful for Bill Clinton in 1992, to concentrate on the war on terrorism and not to mention the economy. And fourth, President Bush campaigned tireless for Republican candidates for the last three weeks of the campaign, especially hard in the last week. What is key is that he did so successfully. The success of the President’s campaigning can be measured in various ways. I suggest that you look at two. First, make a list of the races in which the President interceded in the last week, the seventeen stops in fourteen states. Then look at how the candidates in whom he was most interested fared. I have looked at this quickly; the vast majority won. And in every case, the polling numbers for the candidates got a big boost from the President’s visit. Second, go back to look at the races that were supposed to be close in the final weeks—the thirteen House races rated as toss-ups; the roughly thirty House races rated as leaning one way or the other; the Senate races in the same categories. See how the Republicans did. Again, I have taken a quick look. They did not lose any races in which their candidate was slightly ahead; but they beat a number of Democrats in similar circumstances in the House; they won four of the five tightest Senate races (losing only /South Dakota) and picked up the Georgia seat that had been leaning to the Democrat, Max Cleland. Again, I would argue the President’s influence was key here, because these were the races on which he concentrated. These close races point to another factor not often mentioned in the post-election analysis. The Republicans won the ground war. In 2000 Karl Rove felt that the Republicans lost 2-3% on Election Day and the days immediately before. This year, they tried to correct that. A look at the difference between polls taken just prior to the election and the final results give the best approximation of this impact. Do your own study and see what you find. (You should be wary, however, that all pollsters were concerned that their own numbers were somewhat suspect this year, especially because of the increase in the number of cell phone users whom they did not reach and because telemarketing has turned many people off to any form of approach on the telephone.) Are there other lessons that political scientists will learn from this election? I do not know of any in the short-run, but a number of long-run projects are in the works—and they will tell important stories. One looks at the level of discourse in the campaign. Was this in fact the most negative campaign ever? Another looks at political consultants and the work they did. Have they had an impact nationally that affects the content of all campaigns? Others look at how this election was financed. Does this tell us anything about what is likely to happen in the future? These are the kinds of questions on which one can speculate right after a campaign, but they take careful analysis to reach sound conclusions. But that analysis will be important and will give us good information about the lasting lessons from Election Day 2000.