This may be a little outdated and even may be common knowledge, but it interested me, and so I have hopes it may interest others.
I was watching a presentation by writer Tom Wolfe at Duke University recorded this year on one of the cable channels. Wolfe mentioned, with reference to a different theme, that when at first it appeared John Kerry was winning the state of Ohio handily -- which would have given him the US presidency -- the voting returns from the southern part of Ohio came ringing in and withdrew the chance of a Kerry victory. In Wolfe's analysis, the southern part of Ohio is populated by Scotch-Irish who are a fiercely independent ethnic group with a long tradition of being warriors. In Wolfe's analysis, these people voted overwhelmingly against Kerry because they saw him as for gun control.
I have read an analysis (in the book Right Nation) that concludes that Gore lost the 2000 presidential election because he was a gun control zealot. It pleases me immensely to hear an analysis that John Kerry lost the 2004 presidential election because he was seen to be -- his posing as a good ol' hunter like you 'n me notwithstanding -- a gun grabber, a gun control zealot. Hell, for all I know Kerry is as much a hunter as he claimed to be, but that does not prevent him from being a gun control zealot. I guess he thinks it is OK for a Massachusetts Brahmen to own firearms but not the hoi poloi like you and I.
Anyway, perhaps outdated, perhaps well known, but it wasn't known to me.
