Posted on 01/28/2015 8:32:37 PM PST by Bigtigermike
How is it possible that a president can win re-election by a relatively comfortable margin while receiving fewer raw votes than his first election? Enter Mitt Romney.
A simple data comparison is very telling. That comparison is the Romney raw vote vs. all votes for congressional Republicans in a given state. Crunching the numbers, Romney significantly underperformed the Republican congressional vote totals in multiple states.
In North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin -- all presidential swing states -- Mitt Romney underperformed the total raw votes cast for all Republican congressional candidates by an average of 3 percent. That means that in 2012, an average of 55,000 Republican voters in EACH of these key swing states voted for the Republican congressional candidate but not for Mitt Romney. Whether these voters voted for Obama or skipped the presidential ballot is more difficult to determine, but we know for certain that they voted for the Republican candidate for Congress but did not vote for Romney. Thats simply remarkable.
In American politics its a given that in a presidential year, the presidential ballot drives turnout. Again, Obama is the only president to win a second term with fewer votes than he received in his first election. In the aftermath of a presidential election cycle, we often analyze the undervote, which refers to voters who vote for president but skip much or all of the remaining ballot. In 2012 we saw the undervote in reverse, and theres very little analysis of this phenomena because it almost never happens.
[....]
So, what do these three elections have in common? Michael Dukakis, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, three nominees who form the coalition of the uninspired. All three not only failed to motivate swing voters, but actually depressed their own bases. Of course, we are now departing statistical..
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Long piece but important to show GOP establishment voters that they are doomed if they think a moderate can win. It’s not going to happen even in a favorable year. The base is going to sit out
Here we go again, with a few people deciding the direction this country goes in.
The GOP establishment pretends to not understand the mandate of last November, but they know exactly what it portends.
This is the second election cycle where the peasants really ARE revolting... don’t think they won’t borrow zero’s vote fraud machine in ‘16.
Only Ted Cruz is taking it to the people, and they don’t know how to de-grass the grassroots. It never occurred to them that they HAVE to until Cantor’s spectacular defeat.
Just the way THEY want it.
More evidence that GOPe election strategies and pandering subtract more votes than they add. But they won’t learn anything.
Yep and the fact that’s not lost is that the persons who won underperformed and still these uninspired candidates underperformed the underperformed winner! This is not an outlier when in a presidential year a lot of people voted more for the down ticket than the presidential candidate. Its the truth many conservatives have been trying to tell moderates and their moderate voters including here on FR
That’s where the money goes, which puts ads in people’s faces and wins primaries.
Same thing happening again this time. “Change the party from within” = Definition of insanity, etc.
Think all these instead:
- third party
- Amendment V
- secession
This data proves that the notion of winning by ‘voting for the lesser evil’ and ‘hold your nose’ doesn’t worked and is a lie. Rove and all of those Republican consultants know this and many of us who tried to tell some around here knew it.
its amusing the establishment’s candidates can’t beat Democrats. Will they ever admit defeat?????
—”Long piece but important to show GOP establishment voters that they are doomed if they think a moderate can win. “
Yes, but at the same time a farther right conservative or Tea Party candidate won’t win because the moderates may not vote.
We need a Trojan Horse candidate (someone who looks both moderate and conservative, but when elected, acts as a libertarian/conservative).
The base is conservative, not moderate. Period. I’ll admit there are different nuances of conservatism and what that means to each person but the conservative base knows a clear cut moderate when they see one and they know who is conservative when they see one overall. What makes a Tea Party candidate extreme by the way? What are those views that scares people?
Just because the media howl and scream doesn’t mean Conservatism has to hide, heck they said that Dole, McCain and Romney were extreme so it doesn’t matter anyway just as long you can have someone that can articulate conservatism
Cruz, if I ever get the opportunity to vote for him, may be the last Republican at any level that I ever vote for.
I was one of those 55,000 who refused to vote for Romney. Then there was my daughter, her husband, my husband........
But the GOP-E thinks that it can win without the base....
So, what do these three elections have in common?All three losers faced successful incumbents. Bush Sr -- the only incumbent to lose since Herbert Hoover -- lost because of the astroturf Perot candidacy. IOW,
Calling Romney a “moderate” doesn’t make it so, he’s a far left liberal.
Fine,all this statistical bullcrap,is just that.
Romney was responsible for OBAMACARE,PERIOD,case closed,stop wasting your time,that was the biggest issue on the table and nobody believed Romney,the author of Obamacare was going to repeal it.
Uh! Maybe it was because Romney was the author of ObamaCare and things like like that made him an uninspired candidate and not worth voting for.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.