Since George W. Bush’s decisive victory on November 2, pundits have been proclaiming a great cultural divide in this country and explaining the outcome of this election as a result of the fact that the Democratic Party is out of touch with the heartland of America. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote, “In the aftermath of this civil war that our nation has just fought, one result is clear: the Democratic Party’s first priority should be to reconnect with the American heartland.”

The oft-repeated statistic from the exit polls is that one-fifth of voters named “moral values” as the most important issue in choosing the president. And fully 80% of those who named “moral values” as the most important issue voted for Bush. God, guns, gays, and abortion are the four main moral value issues that pundits claim galvanized the Evangelical Christians to vote for Bush. While there may be some truth to these claims, this hardly reveals a culture war in America.

Let’s look at some conditional statistics.

On the issue of God, 62% of those who never attended Church voted for Kerry and 64% of those who attend Church more than weekly voted for Bush.

On the issue of guns, 63% of those with a gun owner in the household voted for Bush and 57% of those without a gun owner in the household voted for Kerry.

On the issue of gays, 70% of voters who thought that same-sex couples should have no legal recognition voted for Bush and 77% of voters who thought that same-sex couples should be allowed to legally marry voted for Kerry.

On the issue of abortion, 73% of voters who thought that abortion should always be legal voted for Kerry and 77% of voters who thought that abortion should always be illegal voted for Bush.

This prima facie evidence suggests a bitterly divided electorate, and it is not surprising that some have called this a civil war or a “culture war” as Pat Buchanan asserted. Is there another side to the story?

For example, a 68% majority of voters attend church either weekly, monthly, or a few times a year, as opposed to never or more than weekly. Taken together, 51% of these moderately religious people voted for Bush and 48% voted for Kerry. These are exactly the same percentages of the entire electorate that voted for each candidate. This hardly suggests a great divide.

While gun ownership appears to be correlated with candidate preferences,it is not clear that Americans are greatly divided about gun control. According to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 2002, 62% of a national sample preferred stricter gun control in general and 69% favored stricter laws relating to the control of handguns. This does not suggest a cultural civil war.

The voters sampled about the legal status of same-sex couples were actually offered three choices, including the option of civil unions. Of those voters who favored civil unions, 52% voted for Bush and 47% voted for Kerry. But these voters only constituted 35% of the electorate. This does not necessarily mean that the nation is seriously divided.

According to the Washington Post on November 4, “Voters in states around the U.S. found at least one thing they could agree on as they solidly backed proposals to ban same-sex marriage in the 11 states where the issue was on the ballot.” Just as Americans oppose gay marriage, there is also widespread tolerance of gays. According to an article “Acceptance of Gays on Rise, Polls Show,” on March 30 in the L.A. Times, “Public acceptance of gays in the military grew from 51% in a 1977 Gallup Poll to 80% in 2003.” Furthermore, “A 1999 Gallup survey showed that 59% would vote for a well-qualified
presidential candidate who was homosexual, up from 26% in 1978.

”Finally, on the controversial abortion issue, 60% of voters said abortion should either be mostly legal or mostly illegal. This suggests that a clear majority of voters seems to think that some compromise about abortion is warranted. Of these moderate voters, 53% voted for Bush and 46% voted for Kerry. As Nicholas Kristof puts it in his op-ed “Living Poor, Voting Rich” of November 3 in the New York Times, most Americans “oppose ‘partial birth’ abortions but don’t want teenage girls to die from coat-hanger abortions.”

The conclusion we must draw is that Americans are not nearly as divided even on these “moral value” issues of God, guns, gays, and abortion as some in the media would have us believe.

Stanford University political science professor and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Morris Fiorina has authored a book on this subject entitled Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America. Fiorina argues that, “Publicly available databases show that the culture war script embraced by journalists and politicos lies somewhere between simple exaggeration and sheer nonsense. There is no culture war in the United States; no battle for the soul of America….”

Fiorina explains the appearance of a divided nation by saying, “The answer is that while voter positions have not polarized, their choices have…. Republican and Democratic elites unquestionably have polarized. But it is a mistake to assume that such elite polarization is equally present in the broader public. It is not.”

Let’s put to rest this myth of the divided nation. It’s simply not true.