I read this earlier today and was going to post it.
The key factor was the Bain attacks in swing states. That kept blue collar types who were not at all keen on Obama home. They didn’t like Obama, but didn’t feel motivated to vote for Romney.
Down the road I’d really be curious to see what the change in turnout (2008-2012) was in blue collar areas that were targeted with those ads vs. areas that weren’t targeted.
I just checked the results in Pennsylvania which Obama won by 7%. But that 7% works out to only 30 votes per voting district.
Nope. Got beat by early voting, and we've got to figure out how to strangle handle it.
"Early voting gave Dems weeks to ship low info voters to polls." - Dan Gainor (Media Research Council)
I'm in total agreement with this article. This is an astute analysis. The numbers add up and it makes perfect sense with reality. The article shows that in at least Ohio, the lower turnout came from white, blue-collar areas. The Bain ads worked, just as they did in Romney's 1994 Senate race and in the South Carolina primary when Newt Gingrich released the "King of Bain" video.
The primary voters were warned by Newt's campaign that Romney was unelectable, but the Republican establishment continued insisting he was the most electable candidate. The GOP elite is so out-of-touch with working class people that they could not understand how unappealing and unlikable those ads made Romney look. Either that or they didn't care.
If you remember, Newt was savaged by the elites for daring to criticize Romney's business career. I think he backed off after that or just ran out of money in Florida.
The elites and the voters alike failed to accept the fact that these were exactly the kind of ads the Democrats would run and that if they hurt Romney in a Republican primary, they sure would in a general election.
This election was lost in the primary because the voters nominated an unelectable candidate. He was unelectable not because of ideology, but because of unique vulnerabilities to him based on his private business dealings. The conservative base probably did turn out just to vote Obama out. But the swing voters we needed were poisoned by the Bain ads.
If we had nominated Newt, he would be president-elect right now. He had even floated Hispanic governor Susana Martinez as a potential V.P. pick for him. Because of Newt's political astuteness, he would probably have selected either Rubio or Martinez as his V.P., giving him another boost in the final vote.