Gentleman, your bus is here.
Posted on 11/09/2012 4:58:17 PM PST by Iam1ru1-2
As the smoke clears from the wreckage of the Romney defeat on Tuesday, some intriguing yet disturbing facts are coming to light.
* Fewer people overall voted in 2012 (about 117 million) compared to 2008 (about 125 million).
* President Obama received some 6.6 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008 (60,217,329 in 2012 votes compared to 66,882,230 votes in 2008).
* One would think that such a dynamic would have helped Romney win — clearly it did not.
* Incredibly, Governor Romney received nearly 1 million fewer votes in 2012 than Sen. John McCain received in 2008. (In 2008, McCain won 58,343,671 votes. In 2012, Romney won only 57,486,044 votes.)
Why? How was it possible for Romney to do worse than McCain? It will take some time to sift through all of the data. But here is some of what we know from the 2012 election day exit polls:
The President received a whopping 71% of the Hispanic vote (which was 10% of the total votes cast), compared to only 27% for Romney (McCain got 31% of the Hispanic vote in 2008). Obama also won 56% of the moderate vote, which was interesting given that Romney (who got 41%) was widely perceived by the GOP base as being a “Massachusetts moderate.” The President lost married women (getting only 46% of their vote to Romney’s 53%). But won decisively among unmarried women (67% to Romney’s 31%).
That said, what I’m looking at most closely is the Christian vote, and here is where I see trouble:
42% of the Protestant Christian vote went for Obama in 2012. This was down from 45% in 2008. 57% of the Protestant Christian vote went for Romney in 2012. This was up from 54% that McCain won in 2008. When you zoom in a bit, you find that 21% of self-identified, white, born-again, evangelical Christians voted for President Obama in 2012.
You’d think this decrease in evangelical votes for Obama would have helped win the race for Romney, but it didn’t. 78% of evangelical Christians voted for Romney in 2012. Yes, this was up from the 74% that McCain received in 2008, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
To put it more precisely, about 5 million fewer evangelicals voted for Obama in 2012 than in 2008. Meanwhile, some 4.7 million more evangelicals voted for Romney than voted for McCain. Yet Romney still couldn’t win.
Meanwhile, 50% of the Catholic vote went for Obama in 2012. This was down from the 54% that Obama won in 2008. 48% of the Catholic vote went for Romney in 2012. This was up from the 45% that McCain won in 2008. Yet it still wasn’t enough.
Now consider this additional data:
In 2008, white, born-again, evangelical Christians represented 26% of the total vote for president, according to the exit polls.
In 2012, white, born-again, evangelical Christians represented 26% of the total vote for president, according to the exit polls.
In other words, we saw no change at all in the size of the evangelical vote, –no net gain, certainly no surge, no record evangelical turnout, despite expectations of this.
Of the 117 million people who voted on Tuesday, therefore, about 30 million (26%) were evangelicals. Of this, 21% — or about 6.4 million evangelicals — voted for Obama.
By comparison, of the 125 million people who voted in 2008, 32.5 million (26%) were evangelicals. At the time, Obama won 24% of evangelicals, or about 7.8 million people.
What’s more, in 2008, 27% of the total vote for president was Catholic, according to the exit polls. In 2012, only 25% of the total vote for president was Catholic.
Remarkably, this means that Romney got a higher percentage of the Catholic vote than McCain, but millions of fewer Catholics actually voted in 2012, despite having Rep. Paul Ryan, a practicing Catholic, on the ticket.
What does all this mean? A few observations:
During the GOP primaries in 2012, it was reported that there was record turnout by evangelical voters — they were fired up and mobilized then (though largely behind Sen. Rick Santorum.)
There were concerns by a number of Christian leaders going into the 2012 elections that Romney’s Mormonism might suppress evangelical and conservative voter turnout.
The Romney campaign worked hard to not only to win the evangelical vote but to turn out more evangelicals to the polls — but it did not work.
Despite Obama’s pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, anti-religious freedom record — a record presumably abhorrent both to evangelicals and conservative Catholics — Romney simply was not able to cut deeply enough into Obama’s evangelical and Catholic vote.
If Romney had been able win over significantly more evangelicals – and/or dramatically increased evangelical turnout in the right states – he would have won the election handily.
It is stunning to think that more than 6 million self-described evangelical Christians would vote for a President who supports abortion on demand; supported the same-sex marriage ballot initiatives that successed in Maryland, Maine and Washington; and was on the cover of Newsweek as America’s “first gay president.” Did these self-professed believers surrender their Biblical convictions in the voting booth, or did they never really have deep Biblical convictions on the critical issues to begin with?
Whatever their reasons, these so-called evangelicals doomed Romney and a number of down-ballot candidates for the House and Senate.
This is what happens when the Church is weak and fails to disciple believers to turn Biblical faith into action. Given the enormous number of evangelical Christians in the U.S., this bloc could still affect enormous positive change for their issues if they were to unify and vote for the pro-life, pro-marriage candidate as a bloc.
What will it take to educate, register and mobilize Christians to vote on the basis of Biblical principles, and what kind of candidates could best mobilize them?
This is a critical question that Christian political leaders as well as pastors must serious consider. As we have seen, just a few million more evangelicals voting for pro-life, pro-marriage candidates could offset other demographics that are becoming more liberal.
That said, we need national candidates who take values issues as seriously as economic and fiscal issues, and have strong credentials on these values issues, and can talk about these issues in a winsome, compassionate, effective manner.
We need pastors registering voters in their churches and teaching the people in their congregations the importance of the civic duty of voting.
None of this should come, however, at the expense of pastors and other Christian leaders clearly, boldly and unequivocally teaching and preaching the Word, proclaiming the Gospel, and making disciples, and helping believers learn to live out their faith in a real and practical way in their communities, including being “salt” and “light” to preserve what is good in society. What we need most in America isn’t a political revival but a sweeping series of spiritual revivals — a Third Great Awakening. As men and women’s hearts are transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they will, in time, vote for the values they are internalizing from the Bible. As I wrote about in Implosion, if we don’t see a Third Great Awakening soon, I’m not convinced we will be able to turn this dear nation around in time.
If they did; they probably voted for Romney; but were switched to Obama.
80% isn’t a reliable base. If it was 90%+, then, maybe.
I think the GOP alienates more voters than it gains by trying to appeal to ‘Evangelicals’. It’s perceived as a Theocracy party, and in some sense that isn’t wholly inaccurate considering how close Santorum came to winning the primaries.
Excellent point...
Evangelicals are the closest thing to Marxists and Muslims. Birds of feather.
The majority of Republican voters are Protestants of one kind or the other. They are the party. If you don’t care for Protestants in your party you can become a Democrat. They are dominated by Godless, soulless, alcoholic reprobates who molest children.
Actually, none of us have ever seen the Republican party appeal to Evangelicals. The reality is Republicans ARE Evangelicals or they are Catholics ~ and that’s pretty much that story.
Gentleman, your bus is here.
I'm certainly no Mormon (it is a cult), but Romney should have exposed Obama for the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda condoning Muslim that he is. That would have made the difference for the uninformed Evangelical voters.
No...I can't. We were dealt a hand, some did not like the hand dealt, but there it was. NOV 6th was not a time to FOLD.
Voting Principles was not a virtue this time, it was the death knell. You want to own that, it's yours.
My first choice was Newt Gingrich, but I am certainly not going to desert my parties CAUSE to be rid of Obama.
What I will concede on is the FRAUD.
80% isn’t a reliable base. If it was 90%+, then, maybe.
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Its the best the Republicans have. No other demographic comes close. If the dems can pander to blacks, gays, latinos and win elections with that small minority percentage, then why cant Repubs run a strong Christian SoCon candidate?
I’ll tell you why. Because many Republicans are not SoCons and they resent even hate the Christian right position. Want proof? Look at this thread. Mention the name ‘Huckabee’ and see the nasty anti-Christian remarks that are made. Even here at Free Republic.
So what can Rove and the GOP-e do? If they follow the lead of true conservative Evangelicals and consider a Huck or a Palin or even a Newt... they piss off too many RINOs. And besides... the general population will never elect a Christian anyway.
Not any more.
2 corrections. McCain got almost 60M votes. Romney currently has 59.4M, with many votes still uncounted. CA, which has only 71% of the total counted, may add a million or more to Romney's total. I believe he will exceed McCain's 60M.
http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/main
If they voted for obama, they are not Christians!
You doubt it? Review the campaign threads here for the last year or so.
Its time to trash the evangelical base and form alliance with any and all kinds of like minded conservatives regardless of race or religion and rebuild a purely conservative base.
Correction - Romney currently has 58.4M.
I can't figure that one out. So what if 80% Evangicals voted Romney? When 2.1 Million voted OTHER and even JESUS himself as a write in, someone said they voted Geo. Wash.
Didn't want to vote for Satan they said. ROFL
Outside of the FRAUD, Romney sure could have used 2.1 million saner heads.
What were these kind of people called in Scripture...Oh yeah. STIFF NECKED.
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