1. Incumbents are hard to beat. The public liked the guy to begin with and some will not want to change.
2. Natural disasters cause people to feel uncertain and in times of uncertainty people become more conservative and go with the guy they know.
3. Romney failed at turnout.
Certainly there was nothing Romney could have done about incumbency. Also nothing Romney could have done about superstorm Christy/Sandy. Certainly Romney could have turned out the vote.
Romney apparently thought he had it won and was talking about working with the other side, while Obama was appealing to his base. Romney followed conventional wisdom and that may well have tipped the balance.
Voter Id laws work, there is less votes. The Dems won't get these numbers again for a while.
The GOP needs to work on attracting younger voters. All is not lost.
I think you are on to something about the Great Storm of 2012. It was an October Surprise that no one could anticipate.
Makes you wonder whose side God is on?
Is it a chastisement?
Drudge is showing Romney behind Obama by 2 1/2 million votes. That’s pretty decisive.
Romney underperforming McCain overall tells me that there is something we are missing. All I can think of is the Mormon thing. Romney ran more to the right than most expected after he won the nomination, but a lot of the Bush 2004 voters STILL stayed home, along with some of the MCCAIN voters...and Obama didn’t get them.
Romney ran a campaign TEN TIMES better than McCain, and McCain is hardly any more conservative than Romney.....I am struggling to explain that one. All I can come up with is the Mormon thing. Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin...lower totals in North Carolina..Virginia...
A decent sized section of Protestants really do view the Mormons as a cult. I just thought the economy and the anti Obama view would outweigh that. Maybe it didn’t?
Elections have been close like this for quite some time now. Doesn’t mean too much.
Certainly within the range that could've included VOTE FRAUD by numerous means, not the least of which could be hacked voting machines.
However, Obama DID win.
And the demographic groups won’t get any better for Republicans.
No Republican will get this close to being elected until the coming catastrophic economic collapse.
The irony is not lost here…
I am reminded of the South Carolina Primary. Was that a clue that Romney would not have the “it” factor?
All is not lost.. after all we still have sunshine and butterflies.
Thanks for the pep-talk, but what's happening to America is nothing less hideous disaster. It would have been such, even if Romney would have squeaked by last night. We simply can't function as a nation when half the population are functional morons.
REAL morons. Literally functional morons.
In any lost election it is easy to do a what-if and contrive another outcome.
Citing 300k is just cherry picking in my opinion as we lost the popular vote by 2.5 million and while we all understand that it is the electoral college process that is the actual instrument that elects the President, it is a reflection of voters in each state electing those electors by their choice for President.
When we can’t get a majority of the people to not elect the most socialist incompetent performer with a bad track record, we have to acknowledge that the clowns have control of the fun house.
Not only did Obama get a majority of electoral votes, he got a solid majority of popular votes across the nation. Not only did Romney loose on both, he pulled less voters than McCain! Think of that — less than McCain the guy that channeled Richard Nixon in a lot of minds — Romney couldn’t pull as well as McCain even after the country knew what a disaster Obama was from a record of four years.
Our countrymen are no longer made up in the majority with people that think like we and our ancestors thought, lived and believed — that is what has been solidly shown by this election regardless of Romney’s warts. That is a sobering thought.
We could previously look at the subversion of our culture and country and see it as being instituted by a malicous minority of leftist activists. Now we must realize that they have done their work, their brainwashing, their re-education and we are the minority while our countrymen have chosen to go down the rabbit hole of history.
Previously we could look at ourselves as the protectors and rescue force, with all the associated self congratulations — now we are the forces trying to sell Change — we are outside the majority and we must consider that our countrymen have to want what we offer.
Great points. completely agree. People here need to grow a set. I mean, I know its not all roses either, but this emoting is rather, I dunno, liberal...
Turnout went down about 10%, by about 12 million votes. 80% of those votes came from Obama’s 2008 totals, the other 20% from McCain’s.
That is a bizarre result. As has been reported, I think a president hasn’t won reelection with less vote than he was elected with in 40 years or so.
I don’t think the conventional analysis of who “won” applies in this case. People abandoned both parties this time, but by a 4-to-1 margin they abandoned Obama more.
Granted, the huge base Obama started with was the fundamental problem. It seems people now believe Obama is as likely to fix the economy as they thought McCain was in 2008. But they remained even more unconvinced that the Republicans could do it either. The biggest failure of Romney seems to be his failure to respond to Obama’s totally dishonest attacks that Romney would “continue the Bush policies that caused the crisis.”