How did Bush get 11.5 million more votes from 2000?

[Averroës Nix]

Strongly disagree that higher turnout in 2004 was just about 9/11. This election needs perspective from someone who was politically aware during the 2000 presidential campaign. (I just barely qualify.)

The 2000 election was famous for being an election about nothing. There were contrasts between the candidates and the parties, of course, but they weren't apparent to most swing voters and the campaign did little to clarify them. The economy was doing well, there were no major crises in foreign policy, and the federal budget was running a surplus, so many voters didn't have a clear reason to care about politics.

Moreover, Internet media barely existed. If you wanted a different perspective on politics - for example, one that wasn't obsessed with Monica Lewinsky or Elián González - it was much more difficult to find one.

All of that changed during Bush's first term. 9/11 was a part of that, but the role of the Florida recount can't be understated. A lot of Democratic-aligned voters regretted not caring enough to follow politics in 2000. People talked very literally about how "every vote counts."

We also had a recession and the fall of Enron - literally the largest accounting scandal in the country's history and one that rather memorably involved artificial power outages for large parts of SoCal.

Bush increased his vote total, but Kerry also improved over Gore by eight million votes. That's well over twice what Nader had won in total four years before. In short, 2004 brought with it a powerful sense that politics mattered again.