The whites who ‘stayed home’ were not whites who had previously voted for Republicans (much less conservatives), at least not in numbers even close to changing the election outcome.
The whites that stayed home were likely “Reagan” republicans as well as a lot of Conservatives who found Romney a POS and so worthless they did not bother to vote and then there was that fat-headed wideazz NJ Governor. Romney and the rest of the Rovian Repubs are still blaming everyone but themselves.
Good point.
I wish I had more numbers, but there are people out there who just won't vote for Republicans because they think that they are the "rich man's party."
Romney was a particularly bad choice to win those people over, but there were limits to how well any Republican could do with that demographic.
Whites who stayed home in 2012 may have been Obama voters or stay at homes in 2008, rather than conservatives or longtime Republicans.
FWIW: Reagan's victories were at least in part rooted in dissatisfaction and anger about Carter's failures and the liberal politics of the 1960s and 1970s.
It's hard to motivate voters based on things that happened 40 years ago -- maybe before they were born -- so the dynamics of elections are different now from what they were in the Reagan era.
There also aren't those reserves of moderate or conservative Democrats ready to vote for conservative Republicans. They've either died or become Republicans or ceased to be conservative, and something similar happened to the moderate Republicans who also voted for Reagan and contributed to his margins of victory.