Posted on 11/24/2012 6:29:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The last ballots in the presidential election were cast more than two weeks ago. But votes in 37 states, and the District of Columbia, are still being counted, with the results yet to be officially certified.
President Obama’s national margin over Mitt Romney has increased as additional ballots have been added to the tally. According to the terrific spreadsheet maintained by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, Mr. Obama now leads Mr. Romney by 3.3 percentage points nationally, up from 2.5 percentage points in the count just after the election.
Turnout has grown to about 127 million voters, down from roughly 131 million in 2008. The gap could close further as additional ballots are counted. The newly counted ballots have also shifted the relative order of the states.
Immediately after the election, it appeared that Colorado was what we called the “tipping-point state”: the one that gave Mr. Obama his decisive 270th electoral vote once you sort the states in order of most Democratic to least Democratic.
Mr. Obama’s margin in Colorado has expanded to 5.5 percentage points from 4.7 percentage points as more ballots have been counted, however. He now leads there by a wider margin than in Pennsylvania, where his margin is 5.0 percentage points. Neither state has certified its results, so the order could flip again, but if the results hold, then Pennsylvania, not Colorado, will have been the tipping-point state in the election.
Does this suggest that Mr. Romney’s campaign was smart to invest resources in Pennsylvania in the closing days of the campaign?
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it might have been better served by contesting Pennsylvania throughout the campaign, rather than just at the last minute.
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Agreed. No one but Romney could have made Obama sputter so during that first debate.
” Of the above, I would have been supportive of Santorum, but all of them would have been weaker candidates than Romney.”
Depends what kind of campaign you want to see waged. A true conservative candidate would at least argue ideas. Romney, McCain & Dole ran as managers of the social-welfare state.
Just hazarding a guess, but maybe he'd say that he'd rather punish the rapist than the baby.
A fun question to ask liberals who wave the "abortion-because-of-rape" signal flag is, "Do you believe in capital punishment for rapists?" Of course they don't believe in capital punishment for anyone. Then ask why they believe in capital punishment for an innocent baby.
All I see on threads like this is a bunch of navel lint gathering and lame arguments.
Coulda-shoulda-woulda...
Face it, we lost because we are no longer the majority.
Give-me-free-stuff voters and phoney compassion-made-for-television politicians are in the driver’s seat in this nation now.
We have FAR DEEPER problems than who we run. It’s really what we represent that voters are rejecting.
Sadly, I think you're correct. This is how every democracy has fallen throughout the ages.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
So did Bush #2, but people are now defining RINOs as candidates who lost and non-RINOs as candidates who won - if Bush had lost in 2000 he'd be included in the lists of "RINO candidates who lost."
And of course Reagan wasn't nearly the "true conservative" that people nostalgically idealize him to be, and in practice Nixon was the biggest RINO to ever walk the face of the earth.
Again, I like the things that Santorum said, but he would not have made a strong candidate at the national level. Romney was the best we had in the field and he lost. It is what it is.
And, BTW, you are right about managing the welfare state. But that is true of anyone (Republican or Democrat) who is elected these days. Real cuts to the welfare state would mean massive unrest and riots — anyone who is POTUS would have to contend with that. But the Liberal “solution” is to dramatically expand the Welfare state. That plays well to existing (and would be) clients and women. Logically, however, its an obvious formula for long term disaster.
The last President who could have reigned in the Welfare state was Bush II after 9/11—and he punted.
Sadly, I agree. It's simple demographics and we are now outnumbered. This is the entirely predictable result of nearly a half century of Great Society handouts and massive, unchecked Third World immigration.
We needed to fix this 30 years ago. Now it's a little too late. Oh well... Eventually the money will run out.
Without nationwide requirements for photo ID, all elections in this country are worthless and grounds for actions of extreme prejudice.
The "fight" Santorum brought would've been on the wrong battlefield and made things even worse.
I've said for years it was unlikely anyone would beat Obama because of the "historical nature" of his presidency. Romney did a fine job but considering the factors outside of his control including an electorate that still blames Bush for the economy, no Republican was likely to win against a personally popular incumbent.
That said, I'd have liked to have seen ORCA actually work. I doubt we'll see an investigation into whether the anarchists Anonymous really did sabotage it as they claimed.
Since you're prognosticating, have you picked someone for 2016?
Brilliant analysis using facts, figures and mathematical models. As opposed to declarations based on anecdotes and hearsay that you get here on FR....
“There is one additional complication for Republicans in Pennsylvania, however: it has often been a close-but-not-quite state for them. They can find 48 percent of its vote pretty easily, but finding 50 percent is difficult; Mr. Romney was hardly the first Republican to make a late play for the state but fail to win it.”
With Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, the Republicans could have turned the election around. As an aside, it looks like Virginia and Colorado may be slipping from the Pubbies’ grasp for now. Maybe, maybe not.
One thing is certain to me, however. That is, any strategy to reclaim these states must involve an effort to win more Euro-American votes, and specifically disregard the votes of Hispanics, blacks, Asians, etc.
Any effort to “win more Hispanics” to the Republican side will result in the following:
- a marginal increase in the number of Hispanics who actually vote for the Republicans, and,
- a significant drop-off of votes from conservatives who might have voted for the Republicans, but were driven away by “Hispandering” that warps and corrupts the conservative message.
You can’t gain the first without losing the second.
I see other approaches that will help Republicans in the future:
Electoral College reform — there are now 30 states controlled by Republican governors (and legislatures, in many of them). Let’s take Pennsylvania as a specific example. There is no way (at least right now) to physically separate the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh areas (democratic) from the rest of the state (Republican), but there are ways to make the Republican areas more competitive. That’s by changing the system by which PA’s electoral votes are apportioned from “winner-take-all” to “by Congressional district” (with the 2 Senate votes going to the popular vote winner). If this were done, Romney would probably have won 8 or 9 of PA’s 20 electoral votes, instead of losing all of them to Obama. Amazingly, the Pennsylvania legislature (controlled by Republicans) wanted to make this change last year (and the PA governor was willing to sign the bill). Who stopped the change? Why, the state Republican chairman, that’s who!
Election reform — this must be done in two ways:
1. Monitor and prevent fraud on election day, and
2. Change the “voting infrastructure” to the system that is most fraud-resistant
Republicans should create a state-by-state task force to identify areas within their states where attempts at fraud are likely, and then (on next election day) make no bones about enforcing integrity at the polls. This WILL NOT make Republicans popular in the target districts nor in the media. But they must do it anyway.
But this needs to go further (item 2). I believe that certain types of the “new voting equipment systems” may be more conducive to “hidden fraud” than are others. “Touch screen” voting machines and systems that leave no traceable “paper trail” are particularly suspect. We need a study of ALL voting infrastructure systems in use today, to ascertain which are most fraud-resistant, and then, we must push to convert all systems to this type (in states where we have the influence to make such changes).
Example: in my district in Connecticut (yes, a hopelessly blue state), voting is done by issuing the voter a blank paper ballot which is filled in with a marking pen (like taking a multiple-choice exam). The completed ballot is then personally taken by the voter and inserted into a standalone “scanner”, which reads and records the vote (and retains the paper ballot form). This leaves a verifiable “paper trail” of original ballots in the event of a recount. I consider this a relatively secure system (the voter can easily confirm his choices “on paper” before it’s recorded), HOWEVER, what is missing is some kind of “receipt” which can be issued (by request) to the voter as “proof of purchase”, so the voter can actually confirm that the scanner has read and _recorded_ his/her vote “as voted”.
We must push for such fraud-resistant systems wherever possible, in ALL voting districts within the states which we control.
If the Pubbies truly want “a path forward”, it must be via fundamental reforms such as these.
“Romney was a weak girly candidate who I knew was going to lose. He wanted the Presidency given to him without working for it. That is pretty much his whole life....easy. You can’t run for President that way. You have to work hard for it.”
Just as a point of order, how “hard” did Obama work for the position he holds today?
Just as a point of order, how “hard” did Obama work for the position he holds today?
Hard enough. He went from bombing the first debate to winning the next two. He campaigned throughout the year. Romney wasn’t seen for two weeks before the election and neither was Ryan.
Older, "rich", white, northeastern, liberal. The G.O.P.e. have not told me his name yet.
99% of the analytical post-mortems are saying the same thing, that if we want to win, we need to become them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.