Election numbers breakdown

I've crunched some numbers on the election. The states Bush won (red) gained 5.6 million people from 2000 to 2003, with a population growth rate of 4%. The states Kerry won (blue) gained 3.7 million people in the same time period, with a growth rate of 2.65%. This means that Republican states are gaining more people, at a faster rate, than Democratic states. All good news for Republicans? The picture is a little more complicated.

I then multiplied the percentage difference between Bush and Gore (2000) for each state by the population of that state and summed the results. I get an approximation of what the popular vote difference would have been had everyone in the United States voted, regardless of age, citizenship, registration, etc. : 430,000 lead for Gore. The actual popular vote difference was reasonably close to this number: 540,000 lead for Gore. If you follow the same process, using the 2003 population estimates (2004 estimates are not yet available) and the 2004 election tallies, you get a more interesting result. Had everyone in the US voted, Bush would have led by about 8 million votes, whereas his actual lead was 3.5 million. This suggests that the population increases which primarily occurred in Republican-leaning states did not translate into proportional increases in the Republican vote count.

I have not yet studied as to why this may be the case. My Excel spreadsheet with all state-by-state data can be found here.

Sources:
2000 election results
2004 election results
2000-2003 population estimates