Posted on 11/08/2012 5:25:03 AM PST by TigerClaws
One of the more intriguing narratives for election 2012 was proposed by political scientist Brendan Nyhan fairly early on: that it was "Bizarro 2004." The parallels to that year certainly were eerie: An incumbent adored by his base but with middling approval ratings nationally faces off against an uncharismatic, wishy-washy official from Massachusetts. The race is tight during the summer until the president breaks open a significant lead after his convention. Then, after a tepid first debate for the incumbent, the contest tightens, bringing the opposition tantalizingly close to a win, but not quite close enough.
The Election Day returns actually continued the similarities. George W. Bush won by 2.4 percent of the popular vote, which is probably about what Obama’s victory margin will be once all the ballots are counted. Republicans in 2004 won some surprising Senate seats, and picked up a handful of House seats as well. The GOP was cheered, claiming a broad mandate as a result of voters’ decision to ratify clear, unified Republican control of Congress and the presidency for the first time since 1928. As Bush famously put it, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Romney and the GOPe took the Evangelical vote for granted... and here we are.
According to the article it’s looking more like the swing state voters were demotivated by the billion in negative ads.
Careful trusting any of this... there are three stories on FR full front page that all conflict the data of this election... and they cannot all be correct.
LLS
Yep! This is exactly what happened. Not enough conservatives voted because the subborn ass GOP and their rinos were once again foisted upon us resulting in the SAME result over the last twenty years...
LOSERS!
I wonder how many missing military votes and dead Republican voters helped the demoncraps this time around?
To those of you who stayed home, you baked this cake, now Eat It...
If I remember correctly, during the primaries Rick Santorum was winning. He was demonized right here on this site by conservatives. He was called all kinds of names making fun of him and his conservative values by so called Christians.
So, you have a weak argument. The demonizing of all the other candidates by conservatives gave us Romney. So duh?
I personally registered over 200 voters. Made hours of calls, sign waved... you name it.
How did Romney under perform by 6 million votes?
Regardless of who bashed whom, Santorum would have won this election hands down. I think he knows how to explain principles much better than Romney who doesn’t have a core. My only positive in all of this is that it is Santorum’s turn next round...We must have a 100 percent conservative next round. These losers that are chosen are getting ridiculous....All the lying about how great Romney is was a laugh....same with McCain and Dole when they were running. At the convention when people were slobbering over Romney, someone with guts should have stood up and said, “Ok the joke is over and picked someone else”. Everyone knew Romney was a joke from day one...the others were lying to themselves.
There are plenty of people right here on FR who are happy to admit they didn't vote. They think of themselves as smarter...or righteous...or patriots or something.
Here's what they really are...stubborn idiots.
If you didn’t vote in this election or went 3rd party you were absolutely derelict in serving th country.
However that doesn’t change the fact that Romney and the GOPe snatched a defeat out of a sure victory by failing to engage rural values voters... We can’t blame the voters too much... We kept jumping up and down and thinking the election was in the bag. We fantasized about PA and MN instead of reaching out to the base.
Evangelicals are supposed to cut off their noses to spite their faces? The essay has a better explanation.
So who were these whites and why did they stay home? My first instinct was that they might be conservative evangelicals turned off by Romney’s Mormonism or moderate past. But the decline didn’t seem to be concentrated in Southern states with high evangelical populations.The GOPe ran a country club pubbie who ran a lousy campaign.So instead, I looked at my current home state of Ohio, which has counted almost all of its votes (absentees are counted first here). The following map shows how turnout presently stands relative to 2008. The brightest red counties met or exceeded 2008 turnout. Each gradation of lighter red represents a 1 percent drop in the percentage of votes cast from 2008. Blue counties are at less than 90 percent of the 2008 vote.
We can see that the counties clustered around Columbus in the center of the state turned out in full force, as did the suburban counties near Cincinnati in the southwest. These heavily Republican counties are the growing areas of the state, filled with white-collar workers.
Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years.
My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romney’s wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well. The Romney campaign exacerbated this through the challenger’s failure to articulate a clear, positive agenda to address these voters’ fears, and self-inflicted wounds like the “47 percent” gaffe. Given a choice between two unpalatable options, these voters simply stayed home.
I’d concur with you... Better analysis.
I think Romney was a home run in the suburbs and the campaign took rural voters for granted. A stronger outreach to talk radio and evangelicals could have helped get those people to the polls.
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