Ticket Splitting

The Washington Post writes about the election turnout. You can read all about those millions of Nader and new voters who this time turned out in force to vote their approval of the great successes of the first Bush term:

President Bush officially won 62,028,719 votes, which was 50.8 percent of the ballots cast and 11.5 million more than he won in 2000. Sen John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) took 48.3 percent, or 59,028,550 votes. That was about 8 million more than Al Gore won in 2000. Independent Ralph Nader won 440,513 votes, less than 0.4 percent of the total. In 2000, he won more than 2.8 million votes.

Unfortunately, many people who voted Democratic in other races had their votes counted for Bush:

The organization also found that Kerry ran behind his party's statewide candidates -- governors and senators -- who were up for election in 30 of 37 states. Bush fared much better, winning fewer votes than Republican candidates in just 16 of 37 states.