Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham argued that the 2004 presidential election returns show that “Republicans are clearly connecting with the regular people, where the Democrats are not.” To back up her claim, she asserted that in the 2004 presidential election, among those earning between $23,000 and $50,000, President Bush “won by six points in all Americans and 22 points in white middle-class voters.”

Apparently, those constituencies who supported Sen. John Kerry in greater numbers than Bush do not qualify as “regular people.” While the source for the statistics Ingraham cited is unclear, exit poll data show that these not-so-regular Kerry supporters include voters in the $15,000-to-$30,000 income bracket, among whom Kerry won by 15 percentage points, and African-Americans, who voted for Kerry over Bush by an 8-to-1 margin. Additionally, women, Hispanics, Jews, and gays and lesbians all supported Kerry over Bush, by an overwhelming margin in some cases.

Further, exit poll income data show that Bush's largest margin of victory came from “regular people” making $200,000 or more per year; his second-largest among those making between $150,000 and $200,000; and his third-largest among those making between $100,000 and $150,000. Kerry, meanwhile, won among those making between $30,000 and $50,000 and those making less than $15,000, in addition to those making $15,000 to $30,000.

From the June 2 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

INGRAHAM: Well, I think it's interesting that people like [New York Daily News chairman and publisher Mort] Zuckerman [who wrote a June 2 op-ed suggesting that religious conservatives may hurt the Republican Party] would be saying this now, coming off of an election where President Bush was elected with middle-class support, Bill [O'Reilly, host], from about $23,000 to about $50,000 bracket for annual salary. Bush won by six points in all Americans and 22 points in white middle-class voters. So the Republicans are clearly connecting with the regular people, where the Democrats aren't.

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