Evangelicals are supposed to cut off their noses to spite their faces? The essay has a better explanation.
So who were these whites and why did they stay home? My first instinct was that they might be conservative evangelicals turned off by Romneys Mormonism or moderate past. But the decline didnt seem to be concentrated in Southern states with high evangelical populations.The GOPe ran a country club pubbie who ran a lousy campaign.So instead, I looked at my current home state of Ohio, which has counted almost all of its votes (absentees are counted first here). The following map shows how turnout presently stands relative to 2008. The brightest red counties met or exceeded 2008 turnout. Each gradation of lighter red represents a 1 percent drop in the percentage of votes cast from 2008. Blue counties are at less than 90 percent of the 2008 vote.
We can see that the counties clustered around Columbus in the center of the state turned out in full force, as did the suburban counties near Cincinnati in the southwest. These heavily Republican counties are the growing areas of the state, filled with white-collar workers.
Where things drop off are in the rural portions of Ohio, especially in the southeast. These represent areas still hard-hit by the recession. Unemployment is high there, and the area has seen almost no growth in recent years.
My sense is these voters were unhappy with Obama. But his negative ad campaign relentlessly emphasizing Romneys wealth and tenure at Bain Capital may have turned them off to the Republican nominee as well. The Romney campaign exacerbated this through the challengers failure to articulate a clear, positive agenda to address these voters fears, and self-inflicted wounds like the 47 percent gaffe. Given a choice between two unpalatable options, these voters simply stayed home.
I’d concur with you... Better analysis.
I think Romney was a home run in the suburbs and the campaign took rural voters for granted. A stronger outreach to talk radio and evangelicals could have helped get those people to the polls.