Posted on 11/08/2012 3:14:29 PM PST by Arthurio
Mitt Romney's campaign got its first hint something was wrong on the afternoon of Election Day, when state campaign workers on the ground began reporting huge turnout in areas favorable to President Obama: northeastern Ohio, northern Virginia, central Florida and Miami-Dade.
Then came the early exit polls that also were favorable to the president.
But it wasn't until the polls closed that concern turned into alarm. They expected North Carolina to be called early. It wasn't. They expected Pennsylvania to be up in the air all night; it went early for the President.
After Ohio went for Mr. Obama, it was over, but senior advisers say no one could process it.
"We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory," said one senior adviser. "I don't think there was one person who saw this coming."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
” “Vote with your lady parts.” It’s destroyed America. Along with schools teaching girls and even boys to HATE OLDER WHITE MALES (Mitt Romney); This too got 0bama supporters to the polls. Mix in much UNFOUNDED fear and UNFOUNDED hatred based on 0bama’s LIES and we get four more years of DOOM and possibly a Supreme Court Justice Eric Holder.”
We thought the Lena Dunham ad was disgusting. They knew exactly the audience they were targeting with that ad. Welcome to the new America.
I was looking at an article from pilotonline.com and was surprised to see that only Virginia Beach went for Romney among the Hampton Roads cities. Turnout for blacks was huge. Those folks waited in line for four hours in some cases to vote. I did not realize that the area was so liberal. I did not know the numbers were the same in 2008. I guess what shocks me the most is that black people who call themselves religious Christians could vote for a man who supports gay marriage.
I still believe there was massive fraud in key places.
As far as long lines go, our precinct had very long lines from the time it opened until after polls closed. It turns out that they had combined two precincts into one. But they had plenty of machines, so I think the turnout was high. We live in what I call Little Mexico though some of this side of town is heavy redneck and people who would rather pay less for land/house than those who want to live on the white side of town. The people in line with us were not voting for Obama. Yes, there were people talking about it the whole time we were in line. There was a lot of cynicism as well. People think their votes don’t matter but they show up anyway.
A lot of polls hit this election dead-on, just not the ones that Drudge was pushing every day.
I wasn’t surprised at all. I knew that people who voted for Obama in 2008 still were going to vote for him.
I knew there wasn’t a lot of excitement for either campaign this time around.
Even my just turned 18 year old son didn’t register to vote. He didn’t care. Of course, we live in Cali and he goes to college in Texas. He felt like his vote didn’t matter in either state. However, he was very apathetic about Romney.
I didn’t start feeling good about Romney until the debates, and I think the campaign was lost by then.
I’ll also add that I think Romney was pretty nasty during the primary and it turned a lot of people off. I know I didn’t like what was being said about Santorum. I thought Romney was nastier during the primary than during the main campaign. I think he turned a lot of people off to him during the primary.
“When I heard Michael Barone say Romney big, that was significant.”
did he have any numbers or analysis to back it up? I think we bought into anecdotes and assumptions, such as rally sizes and candidate demeanor.
Please folks. I don’t feel bad for him at all. He is a good man but c’mon he was forced on us. We didn’t want him and those that stayed home were just more principled than us that didn’t. He should probably thank God he wasn’t elected to be the captain of the Titanic like another writer pointed out. When the financial collapse comes as it surely would no matter who is president it will all be on zero
I heard a lot of the long lines were due to malfunctioning machines.
I don’t get the long lines at the polls. I have never had a line when I vote, and I live in San Jose, California (a large city).
“Yup....and check out Freeper jackmercer right here on FR last week. He was as good as Nate Silver. He NAILED it. Fact is Rove & Barone & Morris were dead wrong. And jackmercer talks about Drudge just using the 2 bad polls” Gallup & Ras & screwing up all us conservatives, lol, and I’m one of them ! I trusted those 2 polls.”
Trusting those 2 polls was like trusting a high tech growth mutual fund that was the best in the 90’s.
Well,well, Willard the Bland wonders why he lost. Simply put: he played it safe and lost. Like a prevent defense that never prevents the touchdown. Whatever you think of Newt, he would have told it like it was.
Good God there was no massive vote fraud. Checker Freeper jackmercer who called the election out here last week & almost missed nothing. How did he do that ? Was he part of a plot ?
“Please folks. I don’t feel bad for him at all. He is a good man but c’mon he was forced on us. We didn’t want him and those that stayed home were just more principled than us that didn’t. He should probably thank God he wasn’t elected to be the captain of the Titanic like another writer pointed out. When the financial collapse comes as it surely would no matter who is president it will all be on zero”
We didn’t have anyone better. Perry was the only one who could put up a serious campaign organization but he turned into another Dubya at the debates. That wasn’t going to work.
Once Perry was out, we were left between a bunch of small time candidates who were in it for the book deals.
Yes, I remember the relative media approval of Mitt during the primaries. Dead give-away in hindsight. You know the real threat to them was Palin....the talking heads went absolutely apoplectic over her, and still do. I think we should have twigged to that fear and given her a chance.
Reagan was the last Republican who had zero care about how the press portrayed him. I think he enjoyed their contempt, because he gave it right back.
But the Bushes and Mitt seem to care and tried to woe them over.
If you can’t think like Reagan you are doomed to disappointment.
From what I can tell it looks like our side and our pundits made two big mistakes.
A) We all went under the mantra of it’s the economy stupid and figured that much of America would see Obama as worse than Carter. And many of us had that 1980 election imprinted on our brains. Hence we also figured that some portion of unemployed blacks would be frustrated and sit this one out.
But we underestimated the fact that the Dems with early voting in all these states now have in some cases the entire month of October to cart every black voter with an Obamaphone to the polls. Before early voting, they couldn’t get all these people there on election day.
B) By the end of the campaign, I and many other white suburbanites had fallen in love with Romney. He won us over as a decent and hardworking guy who was prepared.
But rural white America apparently didn’t show up at the polls this week. For whatever the reasons (Mitt’s name or wealth or Mormonism) these folks couldn’t relate to Romney so they stayed home.
I would never have predicted this based on the enthusiasm Mitt was getting in the big city suburban areas. But it happened. Maybe Bush got those voters in 2004 because so many in the military are from rural areas and the families and relatives of our military personnel wanted to support our then CIC during wartime.
My hopes honestly began to dim after the third debate when Romney caved and did not talk about Benghazi, fast and furious and other reprehensible administration failures. His fight was gone. I think that hurt the turnout more than fallout from storm Sandy and Chris Christie.
“Whatever you think of Newt, he would have told it like it was.”
Allred would have a field day with Newt. Romney was spotless and fully vetted. You don’t pick someone who wasn’t elected to a statewide office because who knows what they will find.
“Same here. Now I’m just disgusted with those who voted for that same “worst President.”
I’m not “mad” at Obama because he won. Hey, he took advantage of a situation and came out on top. Who wouldn’t?
However, I’m pretty unhappy with a little over 50% of the people who voted, and the people who don’t like Obama either who stayed home (unless actually incapacitated or dead).
Obama isn’t that bad of a guy; there are certainly worse (Howard Dean comes to mind). Obama is just a symptom of a disease. At this time, I don’t think that disease is curable.
I don’t know jackmercer or you. I do know what it looks like when certified poll watchers are kept away from areas that had hanging chads.
I limited myself to only analysing Rasmussen's polls, and even with that the best I could do was give Romney a 45% chance of winning. Given that Romney performed at the P01 point in my model, Romney's chances of winning, in reality, were much lower than Rasmussen's polls suggested.
I'll have to look for a new source of polling data for the next time.
-PJ
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