That's not correct. Since Obama appeared on the scene, twice as many voters have identified themselves as "conservative" in polls as have said they were "liberal." Additionally, party ID has changed from a 12-point Democrat advantage in 2008 to a 3-point Republican advantage (Gallup) in 2012. And every reputable poll indicated a huge enthusiasm advantage for Republicans this year. So we're supposed to believe that given a proportionally larger pool of Republicans to draw from, combined with a 2:1 advantage in philosophical leaning and a massive advantage in enthusiasm (not to mention universal anecdotal reports of actual massive turnout) that we did no better than we did in 2008? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Voters were Dem +6 yesterday. Just like the supposed “skewed” polls said. there was no GOP advantage this year that was a myth I bought into also.
The majority of the Obama campaign was spent energizing its base.
The Romney campaign was predicated on the GOP base voting no matter that he wasn’t a conservative, he didn’t reach out to conservatives, evangelicals weren’t entirely comfortable with Mormonism, he distanced himself from the tea party, and he went out of his way to distance himself from the base’s and party’s natural leader in Sarah Palin.
The base wasn’t extending itself in 2008 for McCain, but for Palin—who had higher approval numbers much of the time than Romney ever did. Had he worked early on to truly unify the party by embracing Palin and even convincing her to be his veep he could have won.
But this was so close and Obama was so beatable that had he even forced the media to expose Obama’s gun-running for Al-Qaeda and its allies in the US orchestrated ‘Arab Spring’, he could have won. Or, had he not been so proud as to constantly plump Romneycare and he had instead really made Obamacare an issue, he could have won. Had he not played footsie with idiots like Christie, who burned him in the end, he could have won.
His campaign was run by a bunch of GOP strategists from MA who somehow thought the tactics that enabled him or, in a wave election, Scott Brown to win in MA were the tactics that would make him win nationally.