“Who Would Keep Me Safe?”: Americans, Terrorism, and Voting in the 2004 Presidential Elections

Abstract

Security and terrorism formed a large part of the messages both from candidates and on the election news in the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign. While the past two chapters in this book have analyzed the messages, this chapter will look at the recipients of those words and images—the American news audience and electorate. Despite decades of study of the American voter, there is no precise, scientific model to explain exactly how campaigns affect election outcomes. This is unsurprising, in that while scholars can build reasonable models and perform useful measurements of voting behavior, elections contain too many variables to make exact calculations of victory or defeat possible. In the U.S. presidential race of 2004, the contest was held against the backdrop of unprecedented security concerns and fear of terrorism as the first presidential election in the wake of 9/11.