The others are the 7 million Republicans that stayed home. Number came from Rush. Ya could look it up
That argument is a canard. Here's why.
According to your flag (and mine), we are voters in California. We both could have stayed home and it would not have affected the chances of a Romney win at all. Such is the nature of the Electoral College.
Jjotto's flag is from Iowa. Iowa was a swing state. Remember those? The election came down to swing states, and to specific precincts in those swing states. The rest of the conservatives outside of those swing states could have stayed home.
So what happened in 2012?
Colorado went 51%-47% for Obama. Denver alone voted 209,759 to 69,755. In a city the size of Denver (pop. 634,265), Romney could only manage less than 70,000 votes?
9 Electoral votes for Obama from a difference of 137,948 votes.
Florida went 50%-49% for Obama. A squeaker. The vote difference was 74,309. Think about all the polling irregularities we heard from Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, with Republican poll-watchers being kicked out for two hours until the police forced Democrats to let them back in. The vote difference in those three counties alone was 574,033.
29 Electoral votes for Obama from a 74,309 vote difference.
Iowa went 52%-46% for Obama from a 91,927 vote difference. Johnson county had a difference of 26,534 votes, and Linn county had a difference of 20,601 votes. That's half of the state differential right there.
6 Electoral votes for Obama from a 91,927 vote difference.
Virginia went 51%-48% for Obama from a difference of 149,298 votes. Fairfax county had a difference of 87,049 votes. Prince William county had a difference of 28,790 votes. Newport News had a difference of 23,766 votes. Hampton county had a difference of 32,540 votes. These are the heavy blue counties, and they overwhelm the rest of the state.
13 Electoral votes for Obama from 149,298 votes.
Add Ohio's 18 electoral votes from a 166,214 vote difference that came from Cuyahoga county, and it's clear that the election was decided by 1,193,729 from targeted counties in targeted states.
Not the "7 million Republicans that stayed home."
-PJ
In addition, those vote margins would have had to come from areas where conservatives were, very recently, voting in bigger numbers and are still in the same place. They are not.
Denver is a good example. McCain got a little over 60,000 votes in 2008. Romney got 9,500 more votes in 2012 than McCain got in 2008.
That’s a pattern I’ve seen when I checked 2008 vs. 2012. Whoever the conservatives were who ‘stayed home’, they are not statistically significant.
-PJ