Who Voted For Bush?

"Research Project for Ms. Anne Thrope’s Grade 9 American History Class" by Diana "Di" Ogenes

This is my research project for my American History class. It is a project which required research about history. It was assigned by Ms. Thorpe and she said it had to be 500 words long! That’s a lot of words but I counted them all and I think I even have a few extra.

I chose for my research project "Who voted for George W. Bush and why?" In a democracy like the one that we have, I think it is important for people to vote. And I thought it would be interesting to find out why people voted for Mr. Bush.

My dad says that anyone who voted for Bush is an idiot. But I don’t think that’s fair. After all, almost half of the voters voted for him and they can’t all be dummies, can they?

For my research project, I chose the personal interview method. Since Mr. Bush won in our Congressional district, I figured it would be easy to choose some names from the phone book and ask them if they voted for Mr. Bush and how come. I’m not sure why, but that method didn’t seem to work very well.

First I spoke to our mayor, Mr. Blo Harde. Since he’s a registered Republican, I was pretty sure that he voted for Mr. Bush. But Mr. Harde said he couldn’t remember who he voted for. He said that 2004 was a long time ago and he was pretty busy on election day and he’s just not sure which lever he pulled. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he said he was pretty sure he didn’t vote for Mr. Bush.

Next up, I tried Mr. Manny Baggs who runs the local bank. My dad told me that Mr. Baggs definitely would have voted for Bush just to get a tax cut. But when I called Mr. Baggs, he said that he thinks he voted for John Kerry in 2004. When I asked him about the 2000 election, he said he might have voted for Bush but that was six years ago and he couldn’t really remember.

I also called Mr. Baggs’s wife, Sadd L. Baggs. She’s the president of the local Women’s League of Republican Voters so I’m almost positive that she voted for the President. I asked her if she voted for Mr. Bush and, not surprisingly, she said yes. But when I asked if she voted for him in 2000, too, she said: "Oh, you mean George W. Bush. I meant that I voted for George H. W. Bush in 1988 and in 1992. I don’t think I ever voted for his son."

I must have called a dozen different people who are registered Republicans but not one of them said that they voted for our President. The sports editor of our local paper said he voted for a Bush recently but it turns out he voted for Reggie Bush for the Heisman Trophy last year. But after the scandal broke about Reggie Bush taking money from marketing agents while in college, the editor called me back and denied even voting for that Bush.

Like I said, I hoped to find out why people voted for George W. Bush but I haven’t had much luck. On the other hand, I think I may have discovered something even more interesting. From my research, it might be possible that nobody voted for Mr. Bush. Isn’t that funny?