I don't think half of the united states are that conservative either. Undecided to a certain extent perhaps (and specially when it comes to deciding the date after which the abortion should be illegal), but fiercely against choice?

From what I've been hearing from a few select voters I think there might be another option to explain Bush's victory, though. Maybe the issues matter very little in reality. They might serve to motivate people into engaging themselves in a discussion, but when the presidental candidate is supposed to deliberate on his stance, it's not really the stance on the issue that is important, almost no matter what that is, rather than how he handles himself it seems. This happens once in a while in elections everywhere, specially when the issues become muddled and the stances are unclear or aren't actually very different. But, it's a little suprising to hear that a pro- abortionist actually favour Bush because he gives the impression of being an honest guy with optimism and who will be likely to act instead of being paralyzed by doubt. He also, apparently, comes off as inspiring and even perhaps a little bit of a comforting figure(I'm not making this up, I swear), who will stand up as a good leader. Kerry, on the other hand is a shrewd, maybe even cunning type, full of doubt and carefully analyzed statements tailored to be irritatingly rational from all points. This might backfire in the way that he is seen as undecided, "flip- flopping", and that his moral and values are fairly slight. I could guess that in this perspective, it does not scan well to state clearly that you are a catholic, but not a catholic anymore when it comes to real issues of importance. Travel further along this train of thought and he is saying that he sees people with conviction for a cause as terribly irrational as well. Not, I think, the kind of president the US wants.

If this could be a fairly common way of looking at things, it certainly appears to have been exactly what the GOP campaign aimed for at least, then actually the decision this election doesn't worry me that much. It must mean that Bush is seriously much more hated than I imagined, or that a pretty large bit of america think this kind of campaigning is repulsive. At least that's somehting. Or, maybe truth and virtue is dead and each candidate managed to lie and cheat about half of the voters into joining their camps. The ones who then decided the outcome would be the fire and brimstone- society who really got their very own candidate this time, and who will be the only ones to get their promises granted.