Pennsylvania alone would not have won the election for Mr. Romney. But if the national climate had been slightly better for him over all, he might have won Ohio and Florida. Winning Pennsylvania as well would have given Mr. Romney the Electoral College, even if he had lost Colorado, Virginia and the other swing states that Mr. Obama in fact carried.
These predictions are meaningless when one of the contestants is willing to use any and every illegal and immoral trick in the bag in order to win.
This past election was stolen. Period.
All of this “if the conservatives want to win, they need to become liberals”-type of analysis is merely after-the-fact propaganda.
Interesting.
I think if GOTV wasn’t crippled by ORCA, we could have won PA.
I still can’t believe how much of a disaster ORCA was. The Romney campaign would have been better off with strike lists.
Did anyone notice how the Walmart protest turned out? It seems that if you have to use actual bodies in place of rigged voting machines, there are a lot fewer leftists than appear to be voting.
I believe Pennsylvania should be contested — but not because Nate Silver says so. Nate Silver is the enemy.
Trying to put lipstick on a pig. He really ought to mention, as an esteemed political operative and statistician, the voting age population grew by probably 10 million, so that turnout is actually going to slip even more in a percentage basis. This means neither candidate was all that attractive. Furthermore,he really ought to be questioned whether Obama had given him the precinct quotas sent out to the community organizers to be met by any means necessary, allowing him to propagate the "turnout will be a lot like 2008" myth. Actually, measured against 2008, turnout was down substantially, so how did polls based on 2008 turnout perform so well?
The Republicans keep choosing idiots like Romney and we will lose. Very easy to see and prove. Dole, McCain, Romney are the worst people on Earth to choose. Oh well if the GOPe does not wake up, we will continue to lose.
The GOP needs to concentrate on eliminating the massive voter fraud organized and financed by the democrat party.
Until that happens they stand little chance of winning the presidency or senate.
Without nationwide requirements for photo ID, all elections in this country are worthless and grounds for actions of extreme prejudice.
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.