Are Conservatives Abandoning Romney? [Say What?!? 7-10% of Tea Party Evangelicals support Obama??]

There have been 16 public polls conducted in swing states within the last week and there is an alarming statistic, consistent in all the polls regardless of the pollster party bias, that should have the Romney camp more than a little worried and possibly perplexed.

The numbers are clear that self-described conservatives are not supporting Governor Romney in sufficient numbers to win the election. Additionally there is anecdotal evidence that Evangelicals and Tea Party supporters are not embracing the Romney-Ryan ticket at levels that would be expected.

Looking at the crosstabs of the polls conducted in Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia within the last ten days, and averaging the support for Obama and Romney by ideology, the chart below speaks thousands of words.

Obama has a 7% greater support level among liberals than Romney has among conservatives, and a 6.8% favorable delta among likely voters who are “bolting from the base”. Without any demographic adjustment, using the raw data from the polls in those five states, Obama has an average lead of 2.5%.

If conservatives were supporting Governor Romney at the same level liberals are supporting President Obama, without any change to the level of support from self-described moderates, Romney could have a 4% plus lead in five states that have a total of 73 electoral votes

With my current electoral map showing Obama with 237 votes and Romney with 222, 73 votes is the ballgame, and by a comfortable margin.

In addition to the ideology breakdowns, the crosstabs show Tea Party supporters favor Romney over Obama, 85.0% to 10.6%, and Evangelical Christians favor Romney over Obama, 63.0% to 28.2%. Now I can immediately write-off a large part of the evangelical numbers because three of the polls conducted by Marist Polling state that 33% of evangelicals support Obama and that skews the numbers badly.

What I can’t write off is there are 7% to 10% of the electorate who describe themselves as either Tea Partiers or Evangelical Christians that are supporting Barack Obama in these five critical states. This is the empirical part of questioning the lack of support from ultra-conservatives within the Republican Party.

Anecdotally speaking there is also evidence that a faction of the party, large enough to insure a Romney-Ryan victory, is not fully behind the GOP ticket. In the last week I have received a minimum of a dozen emails from Tea Party organizations and other ultra-conservative groups demanding the ouster of Barack Obama in November but failing to even mention the names, Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan.

A few of these organizations may have charters as 527’s or another quasi-political group that prevents them from expressing specific support for a given candidate but I know the vast majority are not. So the question that begs to be asked of these groups is if you want Obama gone, why are you not advocating for a Romney-Ryan victory in November?

We are looking at a presidential race today that literally is a statistical tie, and yes I know that phrase is overworked but it is the truth, with President Obama having the upper hand. Clearly there is somewhere between 7% and 15% of conservatives who, while seemingly committed to seeing Obama as a one-term president, are not supporting the only option to victory in November that achieves their stated goal.

So my answer to the question asked is yes, conservatives are abandoning Romney, and that is an answer many Republicans must find unsettling.

ROMNEY: No. My position has been clear throughout this campaign. I’m in favor of abortion being legal in the case of rape and incest, and the health and life of the mother.

I am not sure what you mean by "too late". I know that this is his position, which is not mine, which is that human life must be protected from conception. But his point of view, if heart felt and real, is a very long ways from Obama's view, which even allows for a baby to be thrown in the trash after being born alive. Obama has adamantly pushed for abortion, it's funding and implementation, for any reason, and at any time, not only in this Country, but around the worlds. Obama is a death monger.

On the other hand Romney may be able to influenced and worked with when it comes to passing laws and also placing judges on the Supreme Court and other federal courts. He is not rigidly opposed to all that is pro life.

I am altogether pro life, but when the real choice right now is between someone who has become more pro life, and may be able to be worked with, and a consummate death monger, I think that we should choose the one who hopefully will be pro life in his decisions. I know that he may be other than who he says, but still, he is likely to be better than Obama, especially since his religion, which he strongly professes, believes in abortion only in truly extreme cases (which again, I do not).

I know what is going on with this country but it is just hard to put it into words and I expect people to be angry and unhappy at the situation a bit.

It has to do with people coming at things from different angles and points of view. And I mean within , not just conservative people, but everyone on the right and people who do not like Democrats and Obama. The left will always be a polar opposite of the right and un-american.. But the right is having a hard time figuring out the direction to go.

Lot of people on the left are blinded by hate for America. Lot of people on the right are upset at the left, but are not lock and step on the solution to the problems. I’ve heard good and compelling arguments for and against Romney on the right. I was one of those completely against him in the primaries. I felt people were dumb to have voted for him when we had much better candidates in Santorum, Bachmann and Cain. The left leaning states that went for Obama in 2008 did not see things the way people in the midwest and south saw things. They loved Romney and we were calling him a flip-flopping leftist who created the blue print for Obamacare. Charges of fraud by the left to help Romney were always thrown around on the internet.

The primaries became very polarizing as some people, in my opinion, were duped by Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich into supporting them when both guys had a lot of anti-conservative baggage. But so does Romney. Therefore, now everyone is unsure what Romney will do when he wins and gets inaugurated. We hope he kills off Obamacare and does not try to pass Romneycare on a national basis like he wanted between 06 and 09. We hope he fixes the immigration situation and closes the border down, but does not implement amnesty or comprehensive immigration reform with democrat support.

These are wild times because everything is so unpredictable. Romney is the only choice left for many, but not the first choice. The Palin crowd hanged on till the bitter end when she would not run. Now some people want Romney already challenged by a more conservative person in 2016. He hasn’t even won yet.

And therein lies the problem that people are not in agreement on much. I am with Ann Barnhart who wanted Romney to go home in 2011 and not run. Now we are stuck with him sink or swim. I was for Michele Bachmann and I can say that I went to great lengths to defend her against just about everyone.

The libertarians hated her with a passion. There Ron Paul and Gary Johnson can do no wrong. Bachmann was some neo-con warmonger they said. They bashed her for voting for the Patriot Act and supporting Israel. But Bachmann actually had a very similar economic plan and ideas as Ron Paul, in many aspects. So when she started to as they called it “parrot” Ron, they grew even angrier that she was going to take votes away from him. So they worked to finish her off and spread lies all over the web about her. There watershed moment was stealing some of her delegates at the 11th hour with the Iowa primary about 72 hours away and them switching to Ron Paul. Vindictive people.

Then you had Perry and Gingrich supporters. They attacked Bachmann at any and all costs. They were attacking just about anybody who got in the way. And Bachmann got in the way. Perry came into the race with the goal of both knocking off Pawlenty and Bachmann out of the race for good and taking their voters. Behind a coalition of a bunch of rowdy supporters, Perry stormed in and took a primary lead. As such he took Bachmann support away. After that nothing Bachmann could do was enough. The Perry crowd went after her fist and nails and trashed her at every opportunity. They disliked her inability to attack Romney and thus felt she was helping him win the primary. Then they disliked some of her comments. They later said she was helping Ron Paul because she praised him at a few debates for his economic stances.

Then Perry faded, and Gingrich took over. As Gingrich soared in the polls, the Gingrich folks went after Bachmann. They challenged her on the Patriot Act, on her attitude in debates, on attacking Gingrich and on not having enough experience in congress and politics like Newt. But Newt faded away after a South Carolina primary win.

Then came the Palin fans, early Santorum supporters, some people with Cain. A bunch of Palin fans hated her being the other woman in the race, because Palin was going to “jump” in at any moment. While they waited, they took the long knives out to go after Bachmann. Ed Rollings, the goof who went on to be with Fox News, made a gaffe about Palin when she did a bus tour and he was running Bachmann’s campaign. That was the start of the end for Bachmann. People attacked her for his comments day and night. Wanted Michele to apologize for him and when Ed apologize it was not enough. So they kept on criticizing her. By the time Palin made it official that she was not running, Bachmann was not looking good and Palin went on a show and said this was not the time for Michele as things did not look good. Thanks, but it was not the time for Palin either. No hard feelings but people got catty, batty and the claws came out in the primaries.

Then Santorum chimed in and attacked Bachmann. To not get this comment too long let me just say he stole support in Iowa that helped him win the state that was looking at endorsing Bachmann when she was ahead of Santorum in polls. How he did it, I have no idea. But it was Santorum vs. Bachmann for support in Iowa between conservatives and Christians and Rick won. No hard feelings on my part because then I started to support Santorum when Bachmann dropped out. But even the Cain folks brought out the claws when she quipped that his 999 plan was more like 666. So everyone was attacking everyone.

Romney stood above the fray and nobody could bring him down. Not even Santorum winning state after state that was republican did him no good. The primary system is a joke anyways. And so that is an example of what went on. The division won’t be healed quickly. People were mad at Bush on some level on the right. They were unhappy with other nominees for president like John McCain and Bob Dole. Conservatives hate rinos and establishment types. The tea party movement started to vent frustration on all sides with the left and the rinos on the right. And now people do not agree on various things like who is a rino and who to vote for in primaries. Romney won and he is the only one left now to support in order to beat Obama. But this is a long way from being fixed. And the divisions only helped split apart the conservative votes in the primary and Romney, the establishment candidate, won.

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