R Limbaugh and others keep saying that Romney lost 4 million (evangelical) votes.
I don’t see a statistic that supports that.
The nearest I could find was that McCain lost about 2.1 million over GW Bush.
2000: GW Bush 50.4 million [Gore 50.99 million]
2004: GW Bush 62.0 million
2008: J McCain 59.9 million
2012: M Romney 60.9 million
Yeah, but McCain and Romney weren’t presidents
Initial voting results in 2012 indicated a decrease in votes, but later those numbers were revised up. I’m not sure what extra votes were added later, maybe overseas military ballots, maybe other absentee ballots & such. Rush might be still quoting the initial results. His overall point that the candidate has to get out the base is still correct.
From my own anecdotal experience, I believe many potential Romney voters in key states stayed home, but I don’t know the exact numbers. I always expected some expert to do a full analysis and announce the reasons but the narrative quickly switched to “we have to reach out to Hispanic voters.”