This is really interesting: a rundown of exit poll breakdowns by gender, education, issue, and so on. It seems to refute ideas that have been going around about the importance of religion and rural voters. The upshot seems to be that the biggest positive for Bush was terrorism (as opposed to Iraq, which was a big negative). Religion didn’t matter any more than in 2000, nor did rural voters. Terror, terror, terror. Combined with the Mellman article cited below I surmise that Bush’s job approval rating was boosted by perceptions about his ability to counter terrorism.