But he didn't carry independents: Kerry did.
The median voter theorem says that political parties will tend to offer policies that cater to the voter in the center, so that they will win with a 50% +1 majority. This is particularly true in first past the post systems, and in part explains the big tent character of political parties in the US and other nations that use first past the post systems. What I'm saying is that 2004 was remarkable, in that, if you look at what Bush ran on in 2000 and then at what he did for 4 years, and then what he ran on in 2004, there's no appeal to the middle whatsoever. This showed up in the exit polls, and on the electoral map, which famously did not include a single northeastern state for the GOP winner.
And that's before you start talking about Ken Blackwell and Ohio.
I agree that, in general, the strategy of appealing to the median voter is dominant. But we have to admit that we saw a black swan in 2004: Bush won with a hard-right record, on a hard-right platform, and continued to govern as such afterward. He won because, while we did our damndest, they did even better, and pretty much every conservative in the US voted, and voted for Bush.
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