I see no special reason at all for Romney to get more votes than McCain though. And McCain got fewer votes than G H W Bush!
We were on a downward trend, and there's that awful 2006 election where we had 26 million Republican voters just stay home ~ didn't even bother voting for Congress ~ that's an awful lot of people to pull that trick. Same with the Democrats. They had 30 million Democrat voters stay home just two years ago.
Remember, people tend to vote for their own party's candidates, or they simply don't vote for anyone for that slot.
Remember, also, there are NO real independents who actually vote ~ they end up voting for a Republican or a Democrat 98% of the time.
We have also gone through a recent campaign that focused on just a few states ~ supposedly swing states, or states where the two major candidates were head to head. Who's been out there in THE OTHER STATES stirring up interest? I hope you don't think a handful of Broadcast TV ads will do the job ~
The point is this can end up with a very narrow win by one or the other simply because people didn't bother voting. Under certain conditions one side or the other can appear to have had a terrible loss even when the winning side ALSO failed to get out the vote!
Don't believe the polls either. The telephone call technique has failed ~ used to be you'd call people and get maybe 50% response. Recently that's down at 9%! That is such a small number certain motivated radical groups who are willing to do nothing but answer the phone can and do provide distortions.
The Chick Fil A event is a portent though ~ pro family, pro-life, pro-NO-Bama!
Every time the election has been held on November 6 Republicans have won.
When the Redskins lose at the last homegame before the election, the challenging party usually wins.
Those are also portents.
I'm sorry Joe Morris and I couldn't get together with a flock of pigeons at an enclosed courtyard so we could see what happened ~ but, alas, people would imagine that to be superstitious.
That was mentioned during the 'third party' debate on C-SPAN last night. That was fun to watch...Virgil Goode was the only sane one on the stage.