So it turns out that America isn’t so narrowly divided after all. President Bush won re-election with about 3.5 million more votes than Senator Kerry. The 58.9 million votes Mr. Bush won were more than any presidential candidate in American history, more even than President Reagan’s 1984 landslide. Mr. Kerry was forced by the electorate onto conservative ground, campaigning as a supporter of welfare reform, rights of the people to own and carry guns, corporate tax cuts, tort reform, and increasing the size of the American military.

Americans decided to expand the Republican majority in the Senate to 55 from 51. They also increased the Republican majority in the House, where the GOP already held a 227-205 advantage. At the state level, Republicans will now control governor’s mansions in either 28 or 29 of the 50 states, including New York, Florida, California, Texas, and Massachusetts. They control more state legislative chambers than do the Democrats. When the vote is counted, Mr. Bush may have won more states than he did four years ago. The states he won have more voters in them – and more electoral votes – than they did four years ago, as Americans have been moving to states with environments shaped by Republican policies.

Plenty of theories will be aired now as to how this happened. But one thing is already – and to many of us has long been – unmistakable. Americans are not like the Spanish and French. There is no doubt in our mind that the enemy in the current war ramped up the attacks on our soldiers, like they ramped up their anti-American rhetoric, in the hope that America could be buffaloed. But America’s voters have sent an unambiguous message that they will not flinch in the war launched by the Islamic extremist terrorist enemy.

With Mr. Kerry’s defeat, the Democrats will have to find new leaders. If Senator Clinton is to accede, she will have to demonstrate that, unlike Mr. Kerry, she can’t be portrayed as a weak leader or as an anti-military Northeastern liberal. She has made a good start, albeit only a start, with her votes in the Senate in respect of the war. The Democrats will have a difficult time winning the presidency so long as they nominate candidates who fail to win electoral votes in the South.

With Mr. Bush term-limited, Vice President Cheney heart-limited, and Governor Jeb Bush of Florida having disclaimed his interest in running, the Republicans, too, will face their own leadership contest as they look ahead to 2008. Will Mayor Giuliani, with his divorce and his support for a pro-choice position on abortion and for gay rights, be able to win over the Christian conservatives who helped put Mr. Bush over the top this year? Or will some other, more socially conservative candidate emerge?

Mr. Kerry was gracious in defeat yesterday, saying, “In an American election, there are no losers. The next morning, we all wake up as Americans.” He said “we are required now to work together for the good of our country.” And Mr. Bush was magnanimous in victory, calling his new term “a new opportunity to reach out to the whole nation. “”We are entering a season of hope,” he said.

We certainly share that optimism. And our own hope is that in the next four years, Mr. Bush will win enough victories in the war on the Islamic extremism so that the next presidential election, unlike this one, will be a peacetime election. And we hope that in those four years and afterward, more people around the world, particularly in the Middle East, are able to vote in their own genuine elections. These are hopes that, we think, all Americans and all New Yorkers – Bush voters and Kerry voters alike – can share.