Posted on 11/23/2012 9:24:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In the immediate aftermath of the election, Republicans slammed Mitt Romney for not being able to match the popular vote totals of John McCain, but many forgot that the full totals in the popular vote take a few weeks to finalize. This past week, Romney's totals surpassed McCain's in an election that had a smaller overall turnout, Kimberly Strassel reports for the Wall Street Journal --- and Romney did significantly better in swing states than the GOP did in 2008 as well (via Scott Johnson at Power Line):
Mr. Romney beat Mr. McCain's numbers in every single battleground, save Ohio. In some cases, his improvement was significant. In Virginia, 65,000 more votes than in 2008. In Florida, 117,000 more votes. In Colorado, 52,000. In Wisconsin, 146,000. Moreover, in key states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia, Mr. Romney turned out even more voters than George W. Bush did in his successful re-election in 2004.
By contrast, Mr. Obama’s turnout was down from 2008 in nearly every battleground. He lost 54,000 votes in Virginia, 46,000 votes in Florida, 50,000 votes in Colorado, 63,000 votes in Wisconsin. Ditto Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio. The only state where Mr. Obama increased his votes (by 36,000) was North Carolina, and he was still beaten by a Romney campaign that raised its own turnout by a whopping 147,000.
The notion of an enthusiasm gap among Republicans compared to 2008 is therefore a myth, one suggested by incomplete data the day after the election. So what happened? Did Romney just run out of time, or was Obama’s downturn just short of bad enough to lose? Not exactly, Strassel argues. The demographic data shows that Democrats boosted voter turnout where it counted, and where Republicans didn’t bother to seriously compete:
Because what ought to scare the GOP is this: Even with higher GOP turnout in key states, even with Mr. Obama shedding voters, Democrats still won. Mr. Obama accomplished this by tapping new minority voters in numbers that beat even Mr. Romney’s better turnout.
In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama’s margin of victory there was 103,000. …
Republicans right now are fretting about Mr. Romney’s failures and the party’s immigration platform—that’s fair enough. But equally important has been the party’s mind-boggling failure to institute a competitive Hispanic ground game. The GOP doesn’t campaign in those communities, doesn’t register voters there, doesn’t knock on doors. So while pre-election polling showed that Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end the only campaign that these voters heard from—by email, at their door, on the phone—was the president’s.
In order to win national elections, Republicans have to compete in all communities. That doesn’t mean pandering, but it does mean putting free-market, small-government philosophies and slogans into concrete policy proposals that will improve the lives of voters. It’s not enough to talk about empowering investors to take risk in the American economy; we need to talk about how we can encourage that investment to go into urban centers to revitalize neighborhoods and create jobs. We need to commit to school choice and educational reform, in combination with a shift in control away from federal mandates (and the costly administration they require) to the local school boards and parents. We have to have specific policy proposals on the table and the commitment to follow through on them.
Until we remember what Jack Kemp figured out two decades ago, we will never compete for those votes, and end up with a massive handicap in national elections.
thank you
There is a severe disconnect between how Hispanics live their lives and their support of candidates who work to undermine their way of life.
I believe that hispanics who voted for Obama did so, not because they secretly believe the same things he does, but they voted for Obama because the messages they were hearing was that Republicans are out to get them and do harm to their way of life. They were not hearing anything from us, so it was very easy for them to believe that we are the bad guys.
How do we counter this? By opening a dialogue with them that proves that everything that is written in the Republican platform supports their ideals toward life and liberty.
Obama does not support life or liberty. We need to stand up and get counted for what we do believe. Republicans make the mistake in thinking that the only things that concern Hispanics are their legal status.
They are pro-life and pro-business. We should begin our dialogue on those points.
See my post at #22.
There were quite a number of stupid people I don't consider liberal who voted against Romney because he was "against women" or "a liar". The mailboxes full of fliers (several a day) didn't help. The majority of ads on the radio were against us, e.g. Planned Parenthood running their anti-Romney ad every 10 minutes on the country music station. Many of the ads on our side sucked like the RSC ad against Kaine, it was ridiculous.
Under 70% of the eligible voters are registered. Of that amount about 80% voted in 2008.
So, in 2008, of the eligible population of voters, there were 80 million that didn't vote. That amount is spread fairly evenly across all population groups.
In 2008, Ohio had a voting age population of 8.5 million, of which 5.7 million voted. So almost 3 million voting age Ohioans didn't vote. U.S. Voter Participation 1990-2010
(NOTE: Oddly, in this link they keep saying that 145 million divided by 217 million is 79%, but it's 68%)
2008 vote NEARLY erased racial gap explains how, in 2008, and increase in black turnout brought their voting average to about 65%, which was ALMOST up to the overall population. So even in 2008, blacks didn't vote at a higher rate than the general population, and about 35% of eligible black voters did not vote.
In 2008, blacks were 11% of the vote in Ohio, or about 616,000; 97% voted for Obama.
So, could blacks have increased from 616,000 to 800,000? That's a big move, but would reflect a registration increase of about 20%.
So, while I think it is possible, and certainly easy enough to get a lot more new voters to the polls, including new 18-year-olds, I do agree that 178,000 new black voters in Ohio seems like a stretch.
I'd be curious where that specific number comes from.
I will say that comparing CNN 2008 and 2012 numbers, they suggest that black turnout in Ohio increased from 11% of the total to 15% of the total. 11% of the 2008 total was 616,000. 14% of the 2012 total would be 740,000, so the difference would be 124,000, not 178,000. Of course, that is based on a lower total turnout in Ohio in 2012 from 2008, and the numbers are still increasing for the state as they count more of the votes.
The big thing though to note is that this statement you made : So we are supposed to believe that there were so many black voters that stayed home in 2008 when previously given the chance to vote for a black president?
The answer is yes, the 2008 numbers show that even with the historic black candidate, blacks only managed to get their turnout up to the average for the entire population.
And in the past 4 years, Obama was able to increase that turnout even more, as he used every power available to the President to target that demographic and others.
Consider that the black birth rate for teen mothers was about 10% in 1990.
So, if you are interested in real information, you should take this post as you would a wikipedia entry, and do your own study.
For example, polls showed that Obama would win the election. Col Allen West has conceded his race, the economy is nowhere near depression era, that is a liberal talking point Obama used to excuse his performance, Unemployment is definitely high but was dropping leading up to the election, and most voters are employed, and most who aren't are solid democrat constituencies anyway. Plus, Romney never really explained how he'd fix the unemployment for the disaffected democrats, who Obama effectively convinced that Romney was just a rich white guy who didn't care about them.
The economic election predictors had turned toward Obama in the end of the campaign as well, barely but certainly not the clear "no incumbent wins" type of election.
Thus, when the poster says "So how did Romney lose a race that numerous reputable polls and pundits predicted would be an easy win, based on historical patterns?", unfortunately that statement is a false, unfounded assertion, and thus the rest of the argument fails.
But don't try to give facts to that poster, he doesn't want to read them, and would prefer to resort to childish name-calling.
Not when you take population growth into account. Take McCain, adjust for population growth and his numbers are still better than Mitt’s.
The truth is that he ran a terrible campaign, so let’s stop making excuses for Mitt’s loss.
I see the obamavoterfraud site still has “BREAKING: St. Lucie County, Florida Had 141.1% Turnout; Obama Won County (FL)” in their list. Actually St. Lucie had 70% turnout. It is pretty easy to look up. The claim of 141% comes from a fake listing by some random anonymous idiot commenting on some website. With obvious junk like that, there’s no reason to believe any of the rest of it.
They cheated - but it was our fault that it was close enough for the cheating to matter.
Many people are grasping at straws and still cant accept reality.
The voter fraud arguments have taken on a birth certificate quality. There are such obvious errors in it that it is hard to take any of it seriously. There is in fact serious fraud in places like Philly were 56 divisions with an average of 400 voters in each of them managed perfect Obama scores. That’s out of the 1700 in the city and a lot of those are 100% black (so they had hundreds of chances to try for a perfect score). IMO, the only way they could get a perfect score with no mistakes is by kicking out observers and doing some sort of coaching or outright proxy voting.
Just to report an observation I had during the first Clinton election -
I was working a project in an urban inner city area around gov’t housing projects. The apathy of the work ethic was evident. But come election day, driving by a polling precinct, I was amazed at how active it was. It’s a shame that the same energy could not be applied to working hard at earning money via a legitimate job. I believe there was some fraud, but most likely it has now come down to you really can’t run against Santa Claus.
It’s a long tradition here to vent on issues like Obama’s birth certificate games. Although they are a distraction they don’t impede other serious discussion. The likelihood of fraud in some places like Philly still needs to be addressed.
No true Conservative or even Republican would get so spastic over a factual post about voter fraud.
Spoken like a true Lib
During 2012 here in Cleveland, a morning drive time radio program, heard widely across the state, was besieged constantly by the DNC offering spokespersons to be interviewed. The morning host said, after the election, hardly a day went by they couldn't have had a democrat guest to be interviewed.
Despite repeated calls to the Romney campaign to provide people to balance the program (this is a fairly conservative host), they never heard back from them. Ever. Not one national republican was made available for an interview on a widely listened to radio broadcast in a key swing state.
I don't doubt the GOP failed to try to get Hispanic votes--They didn't even try to get white ones in Cleveland.
Fraud, maybe, some, but the bottom line from 2008 and 2012 as well, is that professional republicans are big on money-getting but just halfhearted, half-assed campaigners.
“GOP turnout: myths and reality (Romney beat McCain’s numbers in almost all single battleground)”
So what? One RINO barely beat another one.
The only vote that counted was Romney vs Obama and even though Obama had significantly fewer voters, presided over an 8% unemployment rate for an extended period of time, lost the first debate horrendously, has crony socialism scandals abound, had the simmering Benghazi scandal surrounding him, Romney still couldn’t win.
If you want to claim election fraud, prove it. Until it is definitively proven or shut down, it will continue. It will probably get worse.
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Yep pretty easy to blow that one out of the water with facts but some don't seem to want to acknowledge them. The West fiasco was largely his and no one elses. Had he worked harder on his GOTV effort in the GOP county of Martin and got more votes there he'd have won the 18th and St. Lucie wouldn't have been discussed. West lost the CD by some 1900 votes and he failed in Martin, not St. Lucie, imo.
West Murphy
St Lucie 52,672 (44.5%) 65,567 (55.4%)
Palm Beach 68,348 (50.1%) 68,158 (49.9%)
Martin 43,333 (57.1%) 32,532 (42.9%) Romney won by 18,083 votes
Click
You probably think Team 0bama has nothing to do with the current assault on the private sector by Unions right now either. Him meeting with union bosses immediately following his theft of the election is just another coincidence. I don't think you realize just how vile and despicable Team 0bama is. You don't know just how evil this demon is because you seem to think 0bama would have nothing to do with stealing an election. He STOLE deceased baby Virginia Sunahara's birth certificate and called it his own (HE CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER HIS OWN BIRTH DATE BECAUSE HE'S USING HER BIRTH DATE NOT HIS), his social security number originating in CT is just an anomaly, and his selective service card date stamp error is just an anomaly. Just a bunch of anomalies.. WRONG. IT'S ALL FRAUD. Anyone on FR who ascribes 'integrity' to 0bama simply doesn't 'know' him. Team 0bama are experts at Saul Alinsky tactics.. Rules for Radicals is their game. Allowing an election to take its course without nefarious intervention IS COMPLETELY FOREIGN TO THEM.
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