In the 2004 Presidential election, the media played a key role in influencing different ethnic and minority groups. This election, more than perhaps any other in our Nation's history, was decided by specific blocs of voters who were influenced by the media. The Republican and Democratic Parties targeted their media buys extensively at their ethnic and cultural constituencies, resulting in the largest turnout ever numerically and the largest turnout as a percentage of the population in almost fifty years. While the Democrats did a good job of targeting and turning out the ethnicities that they believed to be their core constituencies, namely Black and Hispanic voters, the Republicans ultimately won the election because they were able to leverage certain cultural wedge issues to motivate their core constituencies and pick off some of the Democrats'. The media, with its relentless news cycle and never-ending coverage of the campaign, ultimately acted as an echo chamber for both parties. The election ultimately turned on the subject of gay marriage, and the media's coverage of this subject played a key role in the sweeping Republican victory.
First, let us examine the issue of gay marriage. The issue rose to National-level prominence in the past year in the city of San Francisco. In 2000, the state of California passed a referendum, Proposition 22, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In 2003, the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome, flouted the state law by marrying thousands of gay couples at city hall. This was widely reported by the media, and generated a storm of commentary from pundits on either side of the issue. Scenes of gay couples marrying were beamed across the country and dominated the news shows for weeks. Conservatives were outraged that the Mayor was violating state law, saw this as an attempt to undermine the legal basis for bans on same sex marriage, and redoubled their efforts to cre...