GOP turnout: myths and reality

Hotair ^ | 11/23/2012 | Ed Morrissey

[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.

[Obama_Is_Sabotaging_America]

AND ERIC HOLDER SUED STATES FOR THEIR VOTER I.D. LAWS BECAUSE..???
Please answer the question HONESTLY. Not the "Voter I.D. Laws restrict minority rights" CRAP!

[Agamemnon]

Maine and Nebraska apportion their Electoral votes according to the outcome of the Presidential election in the congressional district. Pennsylvania was toying with the idea at one time as well.

It appears that voter fraud could be stanched effectively by doing this nationally.

The congressional districts which represent the noteworthy bastions of fraud like Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, etc. would only potentiate their fraud in the district in which the bastion resides without diluting the electoral turnout in more honest voting congressional districts.

Would like to see a calculation of electoral votes on the basis of this allocation model.

EV allocation would go like this: Say for instance, most of California EV's would go to Obama but not all. Most of Texas EV's would go to Romney but not all. Re-allocate throughout the US. On balance, I suspect we'd get more EV's from states Obama won than Obama would get EV's from states Romney won.

How to wrest victory from defeat:

I suspect Romney would win if even just the swing states allocated their EV's.

Or maybe if the 23 states that have (R) governors and legislatures met in emergency sessions and passed allocation before EV's are counted on Dec 17, we might win this thing after all?

We own these Governors and Legislatures: ME, MI, IN, OH PA, TN SC, GA, AL, MI, FL, LA, TX, OK, KS, ND, SD, WY, ID, UT, AZ ,P> FReegards!

[Red Steel]

Only Obama can get away with his lies. His birth certificate is an obvious fraud and he even confirmed this lie with his companion bio for his first book. It’s nothing but a “distraction” according to many, but it goes to the essence of Obama the accomplished liar.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Might be a Turing machine — I got the exact same response yesterday.

My approach is to continue to educate and inform, in the hopes that this poster, like the electorate, can be brought to a real understanding of conservative principles and critical thinking.

There is a great lack of reasoning in a lot of arguments these days. I think it is part of what makes it hard for us to win voter support.

[SuziQ]

The demographic data shows that Democrats boosted voter turnout where it counted, and where Republicans didn’t bother to seriously compete:

Republicans should ask for EVERY vote, and not bypass those they think would never vote for them.

[palmer]

You probably think Team 0bama has nothing to do with the current assault on the private sector by Unions right now either.

No, we all know that Obama will use all the power at his disposal to destroy America. I have long talked about his war on coal in which he harasses coal operations to raise their costs and hopefully put them out of business. As one example he uses Dept of Transportation inspections to harass the truckers carrying the coal. I have no doubt about your assessment of "Team Obama". They all know the goal and they know how to get promoted. I am sure there are rewards for the bureaucrats who do the most to shut down industry.

Where they have some difficulty is stealing elections since those are locally run. There are plenty of Team Obama members and supporter at the local level and that shows up in places like Philly where they perfected a 100% Obama vote 56 times (meaning almost 400 voters in each division made no Romney votes or Romney mistakes in each of 56 divisions). That obviously points to fraud.

There is a lot of good material on the links above, particularly regarding efforts to further weaken the voter identification and voting processes. But there are also numerous mistakes and some outright false information. There is, in short, no way the election was won fraudulently, not here in Virginia where it was close and probably not elsewhere. In my rural county there was more apathy than not among the conservative voters who were mostly ignorant about the scale of Obama's assault on America and/or not excited about Romney. Part of the latter came from Planned Parenthood who spent our tax money (while claiming not to) on anti-Romney ads on many radio stations including a country station I listen to. A lot of women turned against Romney and a fair number of men were not strongly behind him.

[patriot08]

Spoken like a true Lib.

[IWONDR]

“Yet the Romney/rino crowd are comparing them as though Romney was not a disaster of historic proportions.”

and you and your ilk here on FR are more than thrilled that BO won his re-election as that meant your non-stop campaign against Romney here and who knows where else worked. well done, and i hope you enjoy the next 4 years of Obamanation.

God Save our Once Free Republic.

[ansel12]

God Save our Once Free Republic.

Yet the Romney/rino crowd are comparing 2008 and his own election, as though Romney was not a disaster of historic proportions.

[little jeremiah]

From my reading (and I can’t read everything, too busy), the St. Lucie County numbers are confusing because apparently there were 2 ballot cards for each voter. That said, it is obvious even from my news perusal since the election that there was massive election fraud in many states and districts.

Anyone who claims that the fraud was not enough to change any outcomes is wishfully thinking at best. There was much evidence of egregious voter fraud in many locations. At this point, the Dem party is nothing more or less than a marxist criminal gang. They break any rules they want with impunity, and the Rs act like a bunch of neutered bunny wabbits, with a few notable exceptions.

Stockholm syndrome is rampant on FR. We’re in a coup. Pretending that we are not and we can “try again” next election is pathetic and only postpones any real fight back against the illegitimate administration. (for two reasons; massive election fraud is one, and illegitimate non-legally eligible “president” the other.) Pretty soon it will be like Egypt, don’t forget that 0moslem’s good buddy in Egypt Morsi just got bunches of US tax dollars to assist in creating a hardline Muzzie dictatorship. Yesterday or so Morsi just made up new constitutional rules or whwatever granting him dictatorship powers. Look to see more and more of that, now that the “election” is over, 0moslem will be flexible.

[patriot08]

Excellent, as usual.
Thanks LJ

[palmer]

From my reading (and I can’t read everything, too busy), the St. Lucie County numbers are confusing because apparently there were 2 ballot cards for each voter. That said, it is obvious even from my news perusal since the election that there was massive election fraud in many states and districts.

There were two cards but the election results add up to about 70%. Obama won 66k to 56k out of 175k registered voters. The two cards (one for ballot questions) account for the 140% claim. When looking at most of the fraud claims, it is not obvious at all. I looked through a lot of the counties and independent cities in VIrginia and compared to the demographics (I didn't have registration numbers). It was obvious that the blacks and liberals got out to vote and the rest did not. Obama won in Loudoun county which is well-off and pretty much as fraud-proof as a county can get.

Stockholm syndrome is rampant on FR. We’re in a coup.

The coup is mostly unelected bureaucrats that are slowly strangling American independence and capitalism. The war on coal is a good example. Most Americans would vote against it if they knew about it. But the official and media response when it was brought up was: 1) there is no war on coal and 2) coal is dirty and bad and needs to be ended. Apparently many Americans are too stupid or self-absorbed to see what is going on, not Freepers but the conservative media does not have a big reach.

[palmer]

you and your ilk here on FR are more than thrilled that BO won his re-election as that meant your non-stop campaign against Romney here and who knows where else worked. well done, and i hope you enjoy the next 4 years of Obamanation.

I tend to think the anti-Mormons were not a big factor in the election, they seem to be an online fringe element and I have yet to find someone in person say they didn't vote for Romney because of his Mormonism.

Religious differences aside, it is also a fact that Romneyism would lead to the same outcome as Obama (American debt default and ultimate irrelevance) albeit more slowly.

The remaining question is will Obama carry out his puppetmasters' plan to destroy America as the beacon and several-time savior of the world. He shares their anti-Americanism and he is their tool. But he may waver on sticking in knife completely. Then the question is will Americans wake up to this reality and will there be enough of America left to save.

Then another question is will mainstream conservatives be able to choose a great candidate with all the splits that were engineered into the party by both insiders and outsiders. It is somewhat reflected here, will the splits be healed in time? We have a couple of years for us ilks to agree to some principles and a better way to avoid letting the media pick the candidate (maybe it was "GOPe" but it looked like the media to me).

[CharlesWayneCT]

Stockholm syndrome is rampant on FR. We’re in a coup. Pretending that we are not and we can “try again” next election is pathetic and only postpones any real fight back against the illegitimate administration.

All we want is evidence. The pro "we lost for fraud" crowd has a lot of generalities (It's inconceivable that [insert perfectly conceivable thing here] could happen, so it must be fraud), but no actual evidence of fraud. But to believe this crowd, you have to believe that politicians gave up without a fight when the evidence was clear. That is a truly fantastic claim. Politicians are the most competitive people around. They sacrifice their lives to try to win an office, often spending more money than they will make. They take months off work, they pour their time, money, and effort into the endeavor. They hit up friends, aquaintances, and strangers for money to finance their run. They subject themselves and their family to humiliation. All this because they want more than anything to win election. And now, we are supposed to believe that these fanatically-driven candidates were ALL beaten by obvious and easily recognizable fraud, and instead of fighting on, they just gave up, either because they are chicken, or weak, or spineless, or lazy. To believe this, you must live in a fantasy world. To these people, Allen West is an aberration, the one candidate among all who was actually willing to fight. Well, I've got news for them -- West is the norm for politicians. And he conceded. There was a REAL PROBLEM in the one county, they screwed up their early counts. He got them to recount, it didn't help him, and he conceded. That is what EVERY politician who was in the same position would do. And yet in this fantasy world of the conspiracists, there are places where Obama got 108% of the registered vote, and yet the republican running for local office just gave up, and Romney just gave up. (Neglect for the moment why these people want to have in office people who would so easily give up a fight). Of course, there was no such "108% vote" -- it's just one of dozens of misreadings of data that get into the echo chamber and become the false doctrine of their religion. (there was a county where the total registration was 108% of the census-derived voting age population. There are many reasons for this, the prime being that Ohio is the worst state for getting their registration roles cleaned up. The 108% is in a county with a college, and thousands of college students have moved out and not reported this. But interestingly, in the county with 108% registration, the total vote was only 57% of registered voters, instead of the Ohio average 67% -- in other words, exactly what you'd expect if you have 15-18% invalid registrations). In fact, every specific example given that can be investigated turns up perfectly logical explanations. But mostly they don't give specific examples, just sweeping statements ("Look at all the precincts that voted 100% for Obama" -- as if they not only got fraudulent democrat votes, but also erased republican votes, and those republicans all are oblivious and don't tell anybody "hey, I voted and now it says I didn't. In fact, there are alway precincts that vote near or at 100% for democrats, they are called inner city slums and this is where the democrats have mined voters while republicans are afraid to set foot in the precincts). I've offered in multiple threads to research any specific claim of fraud, and instead of people taking up my offer, they call me names, and brag about how they refuse to read anything that doesn't match their perception. That's not intellectual honesty, that's the kind of mindless idiocy we expect from our opposition. I've talked about how we need to educate the electorate that conservative principles will be GOOD for them, but apparently we first need to educate our own conservative activists in the basic notion if intellectual rigor and logic. We are becoming as stupid as the left pretends we are. And it makes our job that much harder, because each rediculous and easily refuted claim allows the media to ignore another real case of fraud. I don't think people on our side can fathom how badly the whole birther movement hurt us with the people we needed to leave Obama and vote for Romney. And the "voter fraud" sounds as much like sour grapes as "Sore/Loserman".

[little jeremiah]

I can’t read that without paragraphs.

I can’t read pabulum that refutes nothing. There have been countless articles documenting voter fraud. You have proved nothing at all, and I gleaned that after reading a few sentences, before my eyes refused to read the wall of text.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Sorry, it had paragraphs when it started.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Stockholm syndrome is rampant on FR. We’re in a coup. Pretending that we are not and we can “try again” next election is pathetic and only postpones any real fight back against the illegitimate administration.

All we want is evidence. The pro "we lost for fraud" crowd has a lot of generalities (It's inconceivable that [insert perfectly conceivable thing here] could happen, so it must be fraud), but no actual evidence of fraud.

But to believe this crowd, you have to believe that politicians gave up without a fight when the evidence was clear. That is a truly fantastic claim. Politicians are the most competitive people around. They sacrifice their lives to try to win an office, often spending more money than they will make. They take months off work, they pour their time, money, and effort into the endeavor. They hit up friends, aquaintances, and strangers for money to finance their run. They subject themselves and their family to humiliation. All this because they want more than anything to win election.

And now, we are supposed to believe that these fanatically-driven candidates were ALL beaten by obvious and easily recognizable fraud, and instead of fighting on, they just gave up, either because they are chicken, or weak, or spineless, or lazy. To believe this, you must live in a fantasy world.

To these people, Allen West is an aberration, the one candidate among all who was actually willing to fight. Well, I've got news for them -- West is the norm for politicians. And he conceded. There was a REAL PROBLEM in the one county, they screwed up their early counts. He got them to recount, it didn't help him, and he conceded.

That is what EVERY politician who was in the same position would do. And yet in this fantasy world of the conspiracists, there are places where Obama got 108% of the registered vote, and yet the republican running for local office just gave up, and Romney just gave up. (Neglect for the moment why these people want to have in office people who would so easily give up a fight). Of course, there was no such "108% vote" -- it's just one of dozens of misreadings of data that get into the echo chamber and become the false doctrine of their religion.

(there was a county where the total registration was 108% of the census-derived voting age population. There are many reasons for this, the prime being that Ohio is the worst state for getting their registration roles cleaned up. The 108% is in a county with a college, and thousands of college students have moved out and not reported this. But interestingly, in the county with 108% registration, the total vote was only 57% of registered voters, instead of the Ohio average 67% -- in other words, exactly what you'd expect if you have 15-18% invalid registrations).

In fact, every specific example given that can be investigated turns up perfectly logical explanations. But mostly they don't give specific examples, just sweeping statements ("Look at all the precincts that voted 100% for Obama" -- as if they not only got fraudulent democrat votes, but also erased republican votes, and those republicans all are oblivious and don't tell anybody "hey, I voted and now it says I didn't. In fact, there are alway precincts that vote near or at 100% for democrats, they are called inner city slums and this is where the democrats have mined voters while republicans are afraid to set foot in the precincts).

I've offered in multiple threads to research any specific claim of fraud, and instead of people taking up my offer, they call me names, and brag about how they refuse to read anything that doesn't match their perception.

That's not intellectual honesty, that's the kind of mindless idiocy we expect from our opposition. I've talked about how we need to educate the electorate that conservative principles will be GOOD for them, but apparently we first need to educate our own conservative activists in the basic notion if intellectual rigor and logic.

We are becoming as stupid as the left pretends we are. And it makes our job that much harder, because each rediculous and easily refuted claim allows the media to ignore another real case of fraud.

I don't think people on our side can fathom how badly the whole birther movement hurt us with the people we needed to leave Obama and vote for Romney. And the "voter fraud" sounds as much like sour grapes as "Sore/Loserman".

[ansel12]

When someone is as much a disaster as Romney was in losing to Jimmy Carter the II while we are on the verge of a depression, then it is difficult to be sure of all the reasons for his loss, especially when he only has a single election win to his name in 20 years of campaigning.

You list some good ones, but being a cult leader and thinking that you are becoming a God, doesn’t help.

[CharlesWayneCT]

There is little to refute in anything you said. It contains two specific examples given of "fraud", showing that there was no fraud, and it also deals with some generalities of fraud providing information that refutes those claims.

I offer you the same deal I offer all the other conspiracists. Find your best example of "massive fraud", provide the specific evidence, and I'll research it and explain it to you. Maybe there will be real fraud there. Probably not.

To give you an example -- in one case of the "look at all the precincts that voted almost exclusively for Obama", they actually provided a precinct in Virginia. That was useful, because Virginia has a great online database spanning the last 12 years.

So, I compared Romney/Obama numbers from 2012 with the last 5 elections, and not surprisingly, found that McCain did no better in 2008, and even McDonnell who won big in 2010 only did slightly better in that precinct. The precinct simply is a near-100% democrat precinct.

I imagine that if you did the research on all the Philidelphia precincts, you'd find the same thing. Meanwhile, nobody has ever come to a conclusion about the reports about poll watchers being kicked out. We got "reports" about it, but how do we know what reports were true, and which were just someone misunderstanding something they read?

The 108% Ohio number has been thoroughly debunked, as has the 141% ballots claim. The "Romney leading in all the swing states" has been debunked, as has the "all the polls showed Romney would Win" claim.

BTW, I fixed the paragraphs, but it is sad that you are incapable of reading things if they aren't provided to you in small, digestible pieces. And while I now have paragraphs, I still have big words, so maybe you'll still have trouble reading it.

And I don't care -- this is a serious intellectual discussion, and if you can't be bothered to read stuff (you said earlier you don't have time), then you probably won't be able to add much to the conversation.

[palmer]

The birther movement is partly engineered by charlatans (like the obvious inflitrator Polarik) and partly people who demonstrate a tendency to ignore some obvious facts. The election fraud issue is a little too new to be evaluated for its impact on the masses but there are many glaring errors in the lists of links that will be used as clear examples of people who are too busy grasping at straws to do even rudimentary fact checking. The question is whether such low quality content matters or not. Certainly it does not matter to you and I other than being constantly irritating. But does it discredit conservatism? I think that ultimately it discredits the fakes like Polarik, although it can be a slow process.