[Din Maker]

Your point in your Post #69 is well taken. For months, I’ve disputed that 4 million number myself. But, I did not use the number of “4 million”. As closely divided as this nation is today, it doesn’t take 4 million people staying home to turn an Election, 1 million will do it.

As a side bar: I personally know people who did not vote at all because Romney was a Mormon.

[LS]

I know some who SAID that. But, as I gave the example of OH: ZEro won by 166,200 votes. That's significant. That's more than Bush won OH by in 2004 (114,000). The difference between Romney and McCain was about 17,000 fewer votes for Romney than McCain. So, even if every single one of those was a "conservative" who stayed out because Romney was a RINO, you still have to make up 149,000.

In FL, Mitt got 117,000 MORE votes than McCain---Zero got 45,000 more than in 08, and won by 74,000 votes. Hard to figure that by increasing your number by 117,000 you STILL would have to explain 74,000 "missing" voters. I don't buy it.

As for other states, they are more or less irrelevant.

In Colorado, Mitt got 11,000 more votes than McCain . . . and lost by 45,000. So, again, pretty hard to argue that anyone stayed home.

I guess you could say that IF U.S. population grew by x amount during those four years and IF the party splits stayed the same as in 08, then, you could expect y number of new voters for the GOP. But you'd also have an even higher number of voters for the Dems to add. So there is no way that even population growth could account for enough people staying home when in 2012, given that Romney increased the totals over McCain in these key states. The remaining states that were close---NV, IA, WI---wouldn't have made an electoral difference.