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I don't doubt that GOP turnout could have been a lot better and was a big-time contributor to the margin of the loss.

However, it is myth that McCain garnered more votes than Romney as can be verified here.

Just three examples:

Nationwide: Romney 60,932,235 vs. McCain 59,950,323
Michigan: Romney 2,115,256 vs. McCain 2,048,639
Pennsylvania: Romney 2,680,433 vs. McCain 2,655,825

Pathetically small differences, for sure, given ObaMao's four years of misrule. Plus considering that BO dropped from 69.5 million voters in 2008 to 65.9 million in 2009, an opportunity lost partially due to poor turnout for sure. But also outright fraud of a magnitude even more sophisticated than 2008, when certain Philadelphia precincts did not produce 72K votes for BO versus 0 for McCain.

That's why I said counties. While overall Romney did marginally better, part of the problem is the dropoff in those counties from what should have been considered rock bottom - especially considered to Bush 04. I'm no fan of most of that campaign, but Dowd, Gillespie and McKinnon got the votes out of those areas that year. Frankly, I think Michigan in reality went for Bush that year outside of fraud (not in 2012).

In Michigan, Wayne, Ingham, Genesee, Isabella, Shiawassee, Monroe, Calhoun, Gratiot, Mecosta, Roscommon, and Oscoda counties all had dropoff from McCain votes. Obama had a bigger dropoff in some of those, like Roscommon.

The net gain statewide were due to places like Livingston County which is one of the growing areas in the state, has a lot of ex-Oakland residents, and liked Romney because he was a businessman.

The problem is that while we needed those new votes, we also needed the ones we lost to people staying home.

As for fraud, with the way Detroit, its inner suburbs, Flint, and the like have cratered population, I have no doubt there's a lot of that going on. AV most likely.