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VOICE ONE:

Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm FaithLapidus.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember. Coming up ... results from the state andnational elections of two thousand four.

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VOICE ONE:

That was Senator John Kerry last Wednesday, telling hissupporters that he had lost the presidential election.

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President George W. Bush begins his second and final term Januarytwentieth. But first there is the Electoral College tradition.Electors in each state have to meet next month to make the voteofficial.

VOICE TWO:

PresidentBush and his wife, Laura, at a victory celebration inWashington.

More than fifty-nine millionpeople voted for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Thatwas fifty-one percent. And that was three and one-half million morethan voted for John Kerry and his vice presidential candidate,Senator John Edwards. The Democrats had forty-eight percent.

George Walker Bush is America's forty-third president. But he isthe first in sixteen years to win a majority of the popular vote.The last one was his father, in nineteen eighty-eight.

VOICE ONE:

On colored maps on election-night television, red states meantRepublican victories. Blue states meant Democratic victories. In theend, the map looked very much like the map in the two thousandelection.

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SenatorKerry and his wife, Teresa, at his concession speech inBoston

Mister Kerry won all three stateson the West Coast -- California, Oregon and Washington state -- aswell as Hawaii. He also won the Northeast including New Hampshire,which last time voted for Mister Bush. And Mister Kerry won statesin the upper Midwest including Minnesota and Wisconsin. But most ofthe country was red.

The election was decided when a victory for Mister Bush becameclear in Ohio, a large state in the Midwest. There was a long nightof waiting. But this election was not as close as many people hadexpected.

Four years ago, when Mister Bush faced Al Gore, Americans had towait more than a month to know their president.

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VOICE TWO:

Republicans also increased their strength in Congress in thegeneral elections last Tuesday. Most notably, former CongressmanJohn Thune defeated Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota. MisterDaschle is the Democratic minority leader in the Senate. Fifty yearshave passed since a Senate leader of either party was voted out ofoffice.

Republicans gained a majority in both houses ten years ago. Inthe next Congress, they will control fifty-five of the one hundredseats in the Senate. They will control more than two hundred thirtyof the four hundred thirty-five seats in the House ofRepresentatives.

VOICE ONE:

Democrats did score a few victories. A new star in the party,Illinois state Senator Barack Obama, was easily elected to theUnited States Senate.

Barack Obama "src="pool_Barack Obama_dem_convention_eng_150_27jul04.jpg"width=150 border=0>
BarackObama

Mister Obama gave a major speechthis summer at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. He isthe son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from theUnited States.

Only two other African Americans have been elected to the Senatesince the rebuilding after the Civil War in the eighteen-sixties.

VOICE TWO:

In Colorado, Democrat Ken Salazar, the state attorney general,defeated Republican businessman Pete Coors in a race for the UnitedStates Senate. But in Florida, Republican Mel Martinez defeatedDemocrat Betty Castor, a former state education chief, to replaceretiring Senator Bob Graham. Mister Martinez was born in Cuba. Heserved President Bush as housing secretary.

Eleven states had to elect governors last week. Here, voters wereabout as likely to choose Democrats as Republicans.

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VOICE ONE:

Voters inOhio line up to cast their ballots

On the morning of Election Day,long lines formed at schools, community centers and other votingplaces. And this was not just in the so-called battleground states.Democrats and Republicans had both signed up millions of new voters,many of them young.

Curtis Gans is director of the Committee for the Study of theAmerican Electorate, a research group. He says about one hundredtwenty million Americans voted. By his estimate, the turnout was thehighest since nineteen sixty-eight, at almost sixty percent ofpossible voters.

Most political experts had suggested that higher numbers ofvoters would be better for John Kerry. This was not the case.

VOICE TWO:

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We get some sense of who votedfrom the questioning of voters for exit polls. Fifty-four percentwere women. Women have outnumbered men in voting for president forthe past twenty years. More women chose Senator Kerry. But womenwere more likely to choose President Bush as four years ago.

Thirty-seven percent of voters said they were Democrats.Thirty-seven percent said they were Republicans. Independents weredivided almost evenly between Senator Kerry and President Bush.

Election-day reports said that young people represented the sameshare of voters as four years ago. But University of Marylandresearchers disputed the idea that young voters stayed away. Theynoted that all age groups increased their voting.

The researchers say the percentage of young people who votedreached about half for the first time in years. In fact, they werethe only age group strongly for the Democrats.

VOICE ONE:

Even if not as many young voters showed up as some people hadhoped, conservative white Christians did show up. The RepublicanParty targeted this base of support throughout the campaign. Exitpolls found that they made up about one-fourth of all voters. Manyexperts believe they were the deciding voice.

Terrorism and the economy were major issues to voters. But anational exit poll found that even more people said they cared mostabout "moral values." These include issues like same-sex marriageand the ending of unwanted pregnancies.

VOICE TWO:

Elections in the United States are organized by local officials.They choose the voting equipment and ballot designs. Four years agopeople had many problems voting, especially in Florida.

This year the major parties sent thousands of lawyers to votingplaces to prepare for anything. By the end of Election Day, however,most of the problems seemed minor.

VOICE ONE:

Spending for federal campaigns this year reached an estimatedfour thousand million dollars. The Center for Responsive Politicssays this is a thirty percent increase from four years ago. Theresearch group says more than one thousand million dollars was spentin the presidential race.

The elections were the first under a new political finance law,known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. This law bans unlimitedmoney, usually from businesses or unions, in federal campaigns.Instead, the law increases the limit on how much individuals cangive in direct support of candidates.

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VOICE TWO:

Americans also had many state issues to decide. Eleven statesasked voters if marriage should be defined as being between a manand a woman. Voters in all eleven states agreed. They approvedamendments to their state constitutions to ban same-sex marriages.Thirteen of the fifty states now have such bans.

In California, a ballot measure to pay for stem cell researchpassed by fifty-nine percent. The state is to spend three thousandmillion dollars over ten years. Scientists will investigate possibleuses for stem cells from embryos for medical treatments.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, supported themeasure. President Bush has restricted federal financing of studieson embryonic stem cells. Opponents say such research destroys life.

VOICE ONE:

In Arizona, voters agreed to require people to prove theirAmerican citizenship before they can sign up to vote. The initiativealso requires state employees to report illegal immigrants whorequest public aid. Initiatives are a way for citizens to bypass astate legislature and put a measure to a popular vote.

The Democratic and Republican parties both opposed the measure.But many people in the state say more needs to be done about illegalimmigration. Arizona borders Mexico.

In Colorado, voters rejected a proposal to change the way thatstate awards its nine electoral votes. Almost all states, includingColorado, have a winner-takes-all system.

VOICE TWO:

Voters, however, did agree to require Colorado to get at leastten percent of its electricity from the wind and sun by two thousandfifteen.

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Our program was written by Jerilyn Watson, Jill Moss and CatyWeaver, who was also our producer. This is Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And this is Faith Lapidus. To send us e-mail, write tospecial@voanews.com. And join us again next week for THIS ISAMERICA, in VOA Special English.