Deep down, I want to believe something nefarious, but the first logical thought to a 0.6% chance of running the table actually happening is that the polls were wrong, not that they were right and shenanigans happened.
I think that several campaign factors may have been at play:
1. Romney went passive in the last few weeks instead of staying aggressive. He tried to coast to the finish instead of engaging Obama directly.
2. The MSM became a news suppression profession. Reporting has become distorting, breaking news has become blocking news. Romney's passivity didn't make the MSM report the news they didn't want to report.
3. Hurricane Sandy gave the MSM the opportunity to suck the oxygen out of the room in the last weeks. News about Romney disappeared from the national dialog, while Obama was made large. Chris Christie was just the cherry on top, but it would have happened anyway. Even Chris Matthews was happy that the storm happened.
4. Romney never built a team. He offered a vision, but he didn't build a tangible way to get there. The GOP House and Senate are still operating in silos, with each chamber undermining the other instead of unifying on a coordinated message and strategy the way the Democrats do. Romney should have demonstrated his CEO skills on the stump by appearing with GOP leadership repeatedly. Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, and DeMint were absent during the campaign, while Obama had Bill Clinton stumping for him.
I'm not suggesting that Boehner and McConnell could fill the role that Clinton did, but they would at least show the people how an integrated Romney administration would operate. I fear that Congress will still be fractured, with Boehner and McConnell marching to the beat of different drummers.
I'd go to these four points (and others) before assuming that the Rasmussen polls were right and something else happened.
-PJ
Let’s be careful in seeing patterns where there aren’t any. There are two possibilities as to why Romney lost:
1. Vote fraud.
2. The models where off.
FR gives us a certain confirmation bias. We can be an echo chamber, but is the election of 2012 that strikingly different from 2010 or 2008? We might miss the shift, but the entire GOP election machine? Did Romney’s campaign team have polling models that didn’t give them the correct feedback?
Take a look here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83422.html#ixzz2BXwhMxeN
Only 24% felt their families were better off than 4 years ago and 50% blame George Bush. Wow, we’re up against it. The results seem counterintuitive and I’d like to see it all laid out.
I live in the heart of Obamacountry and I didn’t see any enthusiasm for Obama. That he caught all the breaks is awefully suspicious and very Chicagoesque. There was a lot at stake in this election and those that are against us will do anything to wound our country.
Perhaps Obama’s arrogancy and petulance come not just from a narcissistic personality, but were exacerbated because he knew something we didn’t. That no matter what he’d win.
On the contrary I have some anecdotal evidence that undecideds split for Obama. My attorney who likes Romney and up until two weeks ago was voting Romney based on finances and economics voted Obama in the voting booth. Akin, Mourdock and Sandy all contributed to his decision, particularly the Akin/Mourdock comments as reported in the press. He voted Republican on every other race downticket.
If not fraud, then we know that the electroate theories espoused here didn’t fit the experiment/election/reality. We need good models to win.
Once the dust settles and the analysis comes in hopefully we’ll know better for 2014. Of course, once the dust settles it’s settled.