CHICAGO: Election analysts in the United States seem to face the same bewilderment that dogged analysts in India after the unexpected defeat of the Bhartiya Janata Party earlier this year.

To most India watchers following the elections then, it seemed improbable that the BJP, credited with turning India into a nuclear power and economic power, and fresh from its diplomatic successes with Pakistan, could lose.

Here in the US, one of the great disappointments for opponents of President George Bush has been that the war in Iraq has had little effect on the election’s outcome. Neither, it seems, did the two other issues raised by his rival, Democratic candidate John Kerry – terrorism and the economy.

A map of the market for pornography that appeared in the New York Times just before the 2000 election bore an eerie resemblance to the eventual electoral map.

Al Gore carried the areas with the highest percentages of sex films in the home-video market (40 percent on the west coast and 37 percent in New England and the Middle Atlantic states); George Bush carried the areas with the lowest percentages (14 percent in the South).

In this conflict of symbolism, one analyst offered the theory that voters saw Bush as an exclamation mark, a man of fixed and firm views, and Kerry as a question mark, a credible but blank slate.

Some analysts have propounded the view that voters were motivated by either fear or anger. The fearful cast their lot with Bush while the angry voted for Kerry.

Opinion polls have suggested that Bush supporters saw in him clarity, leadership and religious faith, while Kerry backers supported him for his intelligence, compassion and being the agent of change.

The elections have brought the “God gap” in the political landscape. It was, in a sense, a battle between the believers and the infidels. Indeed, Bush’s chief strategist, Karl Rowe made a determined effort to reclaim the four million evangelical Christians who did not vote in the 2000 election.

In the war of values, Kerry was at a distinct disadvantage. Bush is a Methodist and born again Christian who talks easily of his faith. As the results showed, this gave him a substantial advantage over Kerry, a Roman Catholic with a reticence for expressing personal beliefs.

Bush, who has walked a fine line between being steadfast and stubborn, had some historical advantages too. No American President has lost elections in wartime. The last election during a war was in 1968 when President Lyndon Johnson chose not to run.

Kerry labored under a major historical handicap. No candidate has been elected directly from the Senate as President since John Kennedy in 1960.

For the most avowedly capitalist country in the world, the elections were unusual in that values affected the outcome more than economics, and church attendance served as a better indicator of political affiliation than income.

The 2004 election, as some analysts have noted, had a striking similarity to the one in 2000.