Hail to the chief exemplar of conviction politics

Like Australia's recent election, the American election was a study in contrasting campaign styles and issues. In both elections a conservative incumbent, who was loathed by elites, triumphed on the day. In both, opinion polls, having long given a lead to the incumbent, concluded on election eve that the contest was too close to call. But on election day the voters delivered a decisive victory to the incumbent.

George Bush's triumph, like John Howard's, was a personal one - but each of these victories also reflects fundamental changes underway in the respective electorates. Metropolitan elites and opposition party strategists will pay a high price for ignoring the realities reshaping both nations.

The 2004 US election was an historic Republican victory. The Republicans increased their majorities in the House of Representatives and, more critically, in the Senate, building on 2002's successes. Sound familiar? The US South and Plains states now form a political base that may sustain the Republican party for decades. This political sea-change, first visible in 1994, has set in place a new majority party replacing the Democrats, who had dominated for six decades.

That the Democrats lost all five open Senate seats in the South, despite nominating outstanding candidates, is a measure of this transformation. From this new base, the Republicans will set about the transformation of the US Supreme Court, now closely balanced, but with vacancies clearly in prospect.

President Bush will have a strong majority in the Senate to confirm his appointments. And those appointees will still be on the Supreme Court, shaping its opinions, years and years after George W. Bush has retired from the White House to his ranch in Texas.

Bush is now well placed to march forward with his second-term agenda. Domestically: health care reform, social security reform and addressing the budget deficit.

Internationally: Bush must find a resolution in Iraq while maintaining pressure on North Korea and Iran.

But above all Bush, like Howard, must avoid post-election hubris, and he must unite the American people and pacify America's allies.

The US campaign featured two contrasting approaches. The Democrats outsourced much of their "ground war" to organisations like moveon.org which relied on enthusiastic, untrained workers to motivate people who had never before voted, to vote Democrat. Overwhelmingly, the motivation offered was hatred of Bush.

The Republicans' Karl Rove, by contrast, devised a person-to-person plan using hundreds of thousands of committed Republicans to mobilise the party's ideological core.

His strategy was to increase the vote for Bush in traditional Republican strongholds and to show likely voters that this election was all about values.

The core of the Democratic campaign was that Kerry was not Bush; the core of the Republican campaign was that Bush was Bush.

The Republican campaign attacked and severely damaged the leadership credibility of John Kerry: could Kerry lead? Kerry's own record in the Senate, undistinguished to even his friends, was served up as evidence. Kerry's endless iterations of policy nuance, appropriate to the Senate as a deliberative body, further undermined his claims to leadership. Bush, by contrast, is America's first modern president with a corporate background: he is a CEO with an MBA and his leadership looks just like that - decisive, focused and determined. In their effort to influence voters, the Republicans had a positive message: Bush was Bush - a strong and determined leader. Perhaps he had been hasty and wrong but you knew where you stood.

Moreover, Bush represented values that resonated with Americans. In 11 key states, "gay-marriage" referendum questions were on the same ballot paper as the President, House and Senate choices. These referenda served to highlight Bush's determination to uphold the traditional view of marriage, and brought Rove's "values voters" to the polls in droves. The traditional view of marriage was overwhelmingly endorsed, even in progressive Oregon.

Why did the opinion polls and exit polls not capture real opinion in the electorate? No opinion poll predicted a four million popular vote majority for Bush; none was even close. Neither was any opinion poll close in Australia. The answer, I believe, is that contests in which elites demonise a candidate ensure that some ordinary voters are less than straightforward. Values-motivated voters do not want a confrontation, they do not want to be told that what matters most to them is wrong. They do not want to "confess" to a view they know is unpopular - and probably unpopular with the pollster at their door or on their phone. And so, the final Bush ad appealed to voters, "in the privacy of the election booth". There, they could confess to what they really believed.

No doubt also a part of that confession, seldom viewed as "legitimate" in a presidential contest, concerned the choice for First Lady. Either Laura Bush, with whom they could so readily identify (perhaps even more so than with her husband) or the strange, haughty, incredibly wealthy and unbelievably unpredictable Teresa Heinz Kerry, with whom almost no-one could identify. They were an odd couple - the husband with a Senate record in which almost no-one could find a leadership theme to build on, and the wife whom almost no-one could imagine shared their values.

The Bush marital team, as it turned out, was a much easier "sell".

So in the end the US election was, as ever, about character as much as policy content.

The Kerry campaign emphasised the uncertainty of Iraq and the uncertainty of the economy. But if the challenger lacked strength of character, how could he lead the way through those uncertainties?

Kerry in his campaign magnified the doubts about his character - the faux hunter shooting a Canada goose spoke volumes about a willingness to be less than true to one's self.

Bush spoke to the revolution which has created the new Republican majority: religion, strength, conviction and being true to one's self (whatever flaws that self might have). Bush's supporters know those flaws; in the privacy of the voting booth they said they understood. And in that there is a lesson for elites and opposition strategists.