EDNESDAY'S COLUMN in this space listed 19 kinds of Americans who did not vote for George W. ''Rutherford'' Bush. So who did? Whites, men, Southerners, suburban voters barely, and rural voters handily, and the better-off-financially generally. That Al Gore is a Southern, white, well-off male who brags about hunting and fishing mattered not. I will get to ''Rutherford'' Bush's core support momentarily, but first let me correct a mistake from Wednesday.
I wrote that ''The Bush camp orchestrated the alteration of the absentee ballots in Seminole County, affixing voter ID numbers on otherwise rejectable ballots after the fact.'' Several correspondents cried foul, saying that what Republican workers altered were the ''ballot applications,'' not the ballots, and that voter identification numbers were written in on the applications without altering the votes. So there!
''It will be a long four years for you Democrats,'' enthused one Republican, ''So, try to relax. Go out and have a beer with one of your friends - maybe a trial lawyer.'' Not a bad idea. But first let me recap those categories of voters that the Election Day exit poll spit out as Bush voters.
Leaving aside the mess in Florida, which apparently will never be subjected to a rigorous and total recount under stringent guidelines, we can analyze the country as a whole: Basically, it was a guy thing. A white thing. And a Southern thing.
Bush won men overall by 11 points, as he was losing women by the same margin; that's your famous gender gap, a 22-percent swing. Bush won white voters by 12, and edged Gore by 1 point among those aged 30-59. Bush took independents by 2 points, Southerners by 12, Midwesterners by 1. Dubbaya took high school grads by 1, and those with some college credits or a degree by 6. White Protestants went almost 2-1 for Bush. Those with family incomes over $50,000 went for Bush; those up to $75,000 by 7 percent, those up to $100,000 by 9, and those over $100,000 by 11 points.
Captain Cowboy-Hat won the suburbs by 2 percent, small towns (10k to 50k in population) by 21, and the rural vote by 22. Must be that country music thing, even though Gore's from Nashville. Anyone who'd voted third party previously went for Bush by better than 2-1, with Ralph Nader getting 7 percent there, Ralph's best showing in any category except ''liberal independents,'' where he got 14.
White men went 60-36 for Bush, but white women favored the Texan by only 1 percent. Male college grads favored Bush by 57-39; women grads chose Gore, 57-40. So education level did not much alter the gender gap. Gore got creamed by Southern whites, 66-31. Thus was born out Lyndon Johnson's lament that passage of civil rights laws of the mid-'60s by Democrats would doom Democratic presidential candidates in the South for decades to come.
All the trappings of full-blown farce are on display in Florida, with details that, if written in advance of the election, would have been rejected as beyond credibility by any sober reader. One million of Florida's 6 million ballots were on the Ronald Reagan Turnpike en route to Tallahassee yesterday in a Ryder truck. Am I the only one who thinks ''Ryder truck!'' and then envisions something blowing up?
The driver stopped for lunch near Disney World, which I find entirely appropriate for this Mickey Mouse state with the Olive Oyl secretary of state and the Huey-Dewey-and-Louie Legislature and Daffy Duck Governor. Yep, there was Jebediah Bush, kid brother of the Texas governor, allowing as, yep, as soon as the Florida Legislature names its own presidential electors, Jeb will sign it and hand the White House to his brother.
How wacky is that? Then how about old George Herbert Walker Bush, the one Clinton licked, grumping ''I don't like sore losers''? Is there such a thing as a sore winner? Like a lot of Northerners, Easterners, and Westerners, this Texas thing is wearing a little thin with me.
Which is why I was delighted that ''Rutherford'' Bush, who insists he's going to succeed Clinton, picked Andy Card of Massachusetts as his chief of staff. A longtime Bush Inc. loyalist, Card is not only able but amiable, blessedly free of that swaggering presumptiveness some of us find so offputting about Bush, Bush, Bush & Baker.
Between stints serving Bush Enterprises, Card was an auto industry lobbyist in Washington, most recently for General Motors. I find a certain justice for the Nader crowd that in addition to costing the Democrats the White House, and possible control of Congress, their votes in strategic places also made it possible for GM's leading opponent of clean air and global warming efforts will be running the White House staff. Nice going, Ralph.
David Nyhan's e-mail address is nyhan@globe.com.
