Fear of the Missing White Voters - Ruy Teixeira's Epistemic Border Fence

RedState ^ | July 17th, 2013 | Dan McLaughlin

[neverdem]

RealClearPolitics election analyst Sean Trende has come under coordinated red-hot rhetorical fire from the Left for his thesis that one of the major causes of Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 was that a disproportionate number of white voters – mostly downscale whites outside the South – stayed home. Much of the criticism of Trende’s thesis is based on deliberately misreading his policy prescriptions – but it’s also based on a simpler failure to grasp the basic math behind his calculations. Like any exercise in reading exit polls and census data, Trende’s assumptions (which he lays out explicitly) can be critiqued by people who are serious about understanding the issue; there are no definitive answers in this area other than final vote counts. But the vehemence directed at Trende’s number-crunching suggests a Democratic establishment that fears honest debate intruding in its narrative of an inevitable, permanent Democratic majority built on a permanently racially polarized electorate...

[GeronL]

we do not need more Romneys or Rick Scotts

[RedStateGuyTrappedinCT]

One thing they barely mention is the community organizing strategy of Obama/ Democrats . I believe their precinct captains are given a quota and no matter what will turn out that number. With driving people around from place to place to vote multiple times, they’ll get their numbers. I wonder how much voter ID can disrupt that where it needs to, the swing states.

It would be a huge disruption. The proof is how progressives scream like the stuck pigs they are whenever voter ID laws are seriously proposed.

[evilC]

I am not sure how active it is, but the The American Freedom Party does exist.

[GeronL]

okay

[aragorn]

I have doubts about this explanation.

I remember watching the various FR threads on election day. As I recall, many, many FReepers reported that there seemed to be heavy, even record turnout at their polling locations. Indeed, this was my experience as well - when I went to my tiny rural polling place and asked the poll workers about the turnout, the numbers they relayed to me were several times what I have come to expect as "normal" out here.

So, my question is this: did a certain segment of voters simply stay home, or were their votes somehow negated?