Election 2004-- What Really Happened?

Well, a lot of people think Bush stole the election, but there is little proof right now. (There is some proof, but nothing to convince our wonderful media yet.)

In any case, this article is a reasonable overview of the election, and concludes that either:
a) Bush won by vote fraud, or
b) negative campaigning works much much better than anyone ever thought (the thesis being that Bush was much more negative on Kerry than vice versa).

Of course, it could be a combination of the two-- some vote fraud (there certainly was serious vote suppression in Ohio) and very effective negative campaigning against Kerry put Bush over the top.