Despite what the polls say, Mitt Romney will win by double digits… here’s why [Reader Post]

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2012 will not be a reprise of 2000. Although Barack Obama is building an army / phalanx of lawyers to try and redirect the election to the courts with the hope that the justices will lean against throwing out a sitting president, it won’t happen. 2000 only happened because the election was so close, with a mere half percent difference between the candidates. In 2012 that will not be a problem. Of course that was all about electoral votes, not popular, but the two usually go hand in hand. Michael Barone does a good job of looking at the electoral landscape. I’m looking at the popular vote.

Mitt Romney will not only beat Barack Obama, he will do it by double digits. Why, when the polls are so close will the election itself be so lopsided? Here are four reasons.

1. Race: I won’t suggest that it doesn’t have anything to do with race. It does, but not in the way you might think. In 2008, 95% of blacks voted for Barack Obama while 4% voted for John McCain. At the same time, 43% of white voters cast their ballot for Obama, a higher percentage than voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. So it’s obviously not that white people won’t vote for a black man. No, race won’t matter in the election, but it does in the misdirection provided by the polls. It’s called the Wilder effect or the Bradley effect. Named after former Virginia governor Doug Wilder and the late Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, both of whom won election with a lower proportion of the white vote than had been predicted.

This year that effect will be dramatic. Not because whites won’t vote for a black man, but rather because after spending the last four years watching every disagreement with the President labeled as racist, many whites will not tell pollsters they are voting against Barack Obama for fear of being labeled a racist. The result will be that the white vote against the President will likely be 5-8% higher than is reflected in the polls. Good for 3% in the general election.

2. Enthusiasm: The overwhelming majority of polls that have been run over this election cycle have greatly oversampled Democrats while simultaneously undersampling Republicans. This is particularly important in polls in electoral swing states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida. Pollsters have continuously utilized a 2008 voter turnout model to suggest what the 2012 turnout will look like. That makes no sense whatsoever. In 2008 Democrats were frothing with their hate for George Bush and were excited about the possibility of electing the first black president. They desperately wanted a change from the status quo (i.e. McCain = Bush) and were highly enthusiastic about voting for Barack Obama. You could have put 10 ft barbed wire fences around the polling stations and Democrats would have found a way to vote. Today, after four years of abject failure on virtually every level, Democrats still want to vote for Obama, but the passion is gone. They may still support him, but the willingness to climb a mountain or wrestle a bear just to vote for him is gone.

Contrast that with the Republicans. In 2008 many of them were very unhappy with the GOP’s decidedly un-conservative, milquetoast candidate. As a result, while most wanted nothing to do with Barack Obama, many simply decided to sit the election out altogether. Today, after four years of failure and a steady march towards socialism, Republicans in general and conservatives in particular are the ones frothing, this time to depose a socialist king. They feel as if the country is on the line. Many, if not most, feel that the Republic can simply not survive another four years of Barack Obama. When people’s backs are against the wall, they fight far more passionately than they might otherwise. The result will be a GOP turnout that far exceeds what most pollsters are suggesting. This will be good for 4% at the polling place.

3. Hurricane Sandy: The aftermath of hurricane Sandy will not be good for Barack Obama. Even if the press were successful in painting him as the un-Bush it wouldn’t really matter. The scenes on TV are heartbreaking and there’s no way for Obama to benefit from such a tragedy. He will still win New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland, the states most deeply affected by the storm. His popular vote however will suffer. Whatever the number of people who don’t vote in those states, be it a million or two, 65% of them would have been Obama voters. As a result, in terms of the popular vote Obama will lose proportionally far more votes as a result of hurricane Sandy than Mitt Romney will. The impact will be about 1% of the popular vote.

4. Undecided voters: Finally there is the undecided voter. Although I have no idea how someone could be undecided in this election, most polls put the undecided vote at somewhere in the ballpark of 3% – 4% of the electorate. Mitt Romney is likely going to get 75% of that vote. One might think that the undecided would play out at 50 – 50 or maybe 55 – 45 one way or another. Probably not. Dick Morris was spot on when he compared it to asking the question “Do you plan to be married to your wife next year? If you’re undecided, you’re already halfway out the door.” When undecided voters step into the voting booth they will basically be choosing between “More of the same” and “Something else”. When they are standing there I would posit there are four things that will be on their minds – the economy, Libya, Fast and Furious and Mitt Romney’s debate performance. First and foremost the economy will take up about 85% of their mindshare. That’s not good for Barack Obama in any way shape or form. To the degree that undecided voters venture beyond the economy, my guess is that Benghazi and F&F will pop into their minds. Why? Because in an ambiguous universe where a leviathan government is involved in everything but no one is responsible for anything, these two events provide a crystal clear and deadly example of the incompetence and mendacity of Barack Obama and his administration. And despite the mainstream media’s attempts to shield the administration, the story has gotten out. Lastly, undecided voters will remember their surprise when they discovered during the debates that Mitt Romney was not the Gordon Gekko caricature the Democrats had said he was. If nothing else, he seemed competent, earnest and well prepared, something Obama clearly was not. Suddenly they could see him as president. They will come down squarely in Mitt Romney’s corner and that will translate into 3% of the vote.

There are of course other significant aspects of this race such as ground game and commercials, but at the end of the day it matters who is willing to take the time to actually get to the polling place and what they do when they get there. The privacy of the voting booth is the one place where voters can make their choice without having to worry about what anyone else thinks or says, and where they can cast their vote for the kind of future they want.

On Tuesday a beleaguered nation will take to the voting booths. They may not know exactly what they future holds, but they know they’ve had enough of what we have. When the dust settles they will have given Mitt Romney a resounding mandate for change.

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I just hope that it’s raining like hell in every battleground state tomorrow. That will guarantee a RR win.

Gonna be a lot of shocked looks tomorrow. Not in my house or yours, though….

I thought you were going somewhere else with #1 and #2. You were close.
Here is the truth about race in this election and oversampling Democrats…
Every pollster will tell you that they DO NOT weight party preference, which is true. They don’t. This should be evident by the wild swings in partisan weight from one poll to another – even from week to week from the same pollster. So why do they swing so wildly, from +5D to +11D? The answer is uglier than weighing by party. Instead, they weigh by RACE!

2008 did not actually have all that much different racial composition than the 2004 election. There was a slight uptick of maybe 1% for blacks and hispanics at the expense of the white share of the vote. Obama did well across all demographics. But Obama’s team has known for a while now that he is doing much worse with every demographic group than he did in 2008. He does worst among whites, men, independents, and voters over 35. The older the voter group, the worse he does. So now you see why the entire Obama campaign has been about going after the votes of minorities, women, and young voters. See, even these core constituencies have seen erosion, but unlike white males, it is more likely to materialize in lower participation than an outright flip to Romney. So Obama has been waging a “base” campaign, trying to reengage these voters. That’s why all the fear and loathing of Romney from Obama’s campaign. The “War on Women,” putting “ya’ll back in chains,” and the TEMPORARY amnesty by fiat that will go away in 2 years (without Obama.) These voters need to be motivated by fear, anger, hatred, and revenge to vote for Obama. Precisely because they aren’t excited about voting for Obama, and will likely stay home if they don’t see Romney as an evil that must be stopped.

Obama’s team knows that the mass exodus of whites, males, independents, and older voters to Mitt Romney needs to be offset. They see hispanics as the best place to make up for it. It’s why we’ve been hearing for a year that “hispanics will determine this election.” In 2008, the electorate was 76% white, 12% black, and 7% hispanic. Hispanics are historically low turnout voters, which is why Obama is targeting them so vigorously. The hispanic vote has the most room to grow. Their target turnout model that projects victory in this election is 70% white, 12% black 13% hispanic. This represents nearly doubling the hispanic vote, which would result in about an 8 point swing in favor of Democrats over the 2008 turnout, given party preferences among the races this election. It increases the hispanic share by 6 points completely at the expense of white voters. It is a fantasy, but it is what Obama needs, if he is to have any chance of winning.

Obama’s team has told all of the media organizations and pollsters that this is the turnout model they should use, and largely, they have complied. Now all of the pieces should fall into place. The exaggerated party preference make sense in this context suddenly. So does the magical ‘tie’ between Romney and Obama, regardless if the party ID is +6D or +11D. This is why it is all a sham. The turnout model reflects Obama’s wishful thinking, not reality. If the demographic turnout is the same as 2008, Obama loses by several points. If party ID looks like 2004 or 2010 (+3D), it is a landslide. If it actually tilts to +R, as Rasmussen and Gallup have predicted (even though they are not using it in their weighting) then it will be a massacre not seen since Reagan.

Vince
thank you very interesting and uplifting,
@BEN
same thanks for your analytic calculation,
I can’t wait for the results,
did you know that CANADA HAS CHOSEN MITT ROMNEY,
because they feel more able to make deals with his agenda, oil and other,
and military policy,
wishing all the best.

Great post, Vince. While I still stand by my own predictions, yours give me a helluva lot more optimism than my “Bugs & Daffy” theory!

Vince Bradley affect actually coined in 1982 when Black L.A Mayor Tom Bradley LOST in bid for Governor to George Deukmejian. He had lead in polls and thought was many whites who had said they were for him actually ended up voting for “Duke”

I have gone on record as saying that Romney will win this one by at least 6 points. Good article, Vince.

I think that many “undecided voters” actually know who they plan to vote for but don’t want to say. There is also the possibility that they may be undecided about other political races or ballot issues. Local candidates seem to make it very hard to find out anything about them outside of their campaign mailers and signs. You’d almost think they don’t want the voters to know anything about them.

@Richard Wheeler: You are correct sir… Poor editing on my part. Thanks!

Finally! As they say, this is why we play the games…

Petercat
hi, is it raining?
best to you

VINCE
HI,
AND WE PLAYED IT FULLY,
WE DESERVE TO WIN
now they are finding illegal are voting,
that’s why OBAMA LOOK SO SECURE IN THE LAST SPEECH,
FOR LIKE HE SAY “REVENGE
BEST TO YOU

Michael Barone is just a right-wing pundit—making self-serving predictions (similar to Karl Rove).

Liberal1
and they are better than LIBERALS from way above the expertize

Stephanie Cutter (Obama’s main man) said a scary thing yesterday regarding the Obama supporters and the election results.
She said: We need to stay calm for much of the day.
Stay calm for MUCH of the day, today?
WHAT does she want to happen AFTER these folks have been calm for a while?
Riots?

Yes, Romney might well win decisively.
But even if he does we might see ”unrest.”
Sadly, the call for it seems to be coming from some of Obama’s top people.
Stephanie Cutter is Obama’s deputy campaign manager.

Vince You’re welcome.Don’t think “Bradley effect” in effect 30 years later.

Petercat #1 Gotta be sad you need DIMINISHED voter turnout assisted by bad weather to get a win.

How wrong do you have to be before you admit you are wrong? My guess is that you will never admit it. No shame.

In the aftermath, all I can say is that the GOP chose Romney to lose because it refused to allow the only statesman in America today to take his rightful place as the Republican nominee and become our next President because there is no doubt in my mind he would have won. The GOP blacked out, cheated and frauded Ron Paul and physically assaulted his supporters. Ron Paul had the youth, had the disenfranchised dems, has a clear conservative message, has a brilliant fiscal plan, is strong on civil liberties and is definite on following the Constitution.
But you didn’t want that. You wanted war. You wanted an Isreali-firster foreign policy. I am reading blog post after blog post on other sites about how Romney lost bcause he wasn’t really a conservative. I knew that. A few here even knew that. Romney couldn’t even get people to his rallies before he was nominated.
Watch the enthusiasm the GOP rejected. It was obvious to anyone with ears that hear and eyes that see why Romney would lose.
I’m not happy at all that BO won, but hopefully now some people may actually wake up. America lost big because of its stubborness and refusal to actually want to divest itself from the TSA, unPATRIOT Act, NDAA and a whole list of assaults on our liberties in favor of warmongering.

justme95
now after the fact, I guess RON PAUL might have won it,
but we had only one to compete only one, it had to be a choice,
and WAS RON PAUL ON THE BALLOT?
THERE WAS JOHNSON WHO TOOK SOME VOTES I heard,
you know those votes could have made a win for ROMNEY,
what the heck , it could have put ROMNEY IN VICTORY
there could not have been 2 OR 3 to win, but if the two did not rally their followers and lead them to ROMNE, and pull back it would have also work for them after winning,
they did not want to cut out, well they did cut their nose in spite of their face,
it was so close,

justme95,
you know, yes it was as close as half and half, well if it is that trend it wont get fix,
no it will be increasing while OBAMA IS IN POWER,
we cannot fool ourselves, then why not have a PRESIDENT FOR THIS SIDE?
it could be done, how?
a president of the party to begin with,

Hi Bees,
Ron Paul was on the ballot as a wrie-in in Maine and California and several other states allowed write-ins – so yes, he was on the ballot. Once the numbers are released by the various Secratary of States we’ll know better how much of a Ron Paul/Gary Johnson factor there was; if they ever release that information.
And now we have 3 states, Alabama, Texas and Louisiana petitioning the government to ‘peacefully withdraw’ from the Obamanation. Fat chance they’ll achieve that through peaceful means. And I bet everyone who signs that petition will soon find him/herself staring down the barrel of a gun and trotted off to one of those marvelous FEMA prison camps – if they’re even open.
And what about this juicy news? The DHS just graduated its first lass of Hitler FEMA Youth Corp. I’m sure it’s all for the sake of the children who need to ‘be prepared’.
Romney wouldn’t have ended this program. He loves the DHS, NDAA, unPatriot Act, TSA, World Bank, UN, WTO, GATT, GMOs, etc and apparently so does everyone who voted for Romney.
What’s crazy to me is that the biggest issue most of these people had with Ron Paul was that he wasn’t a warmonger. Well I hope they’re happy now because those folk are definitely going to get a war – but it won’t just be in Syria and Iran, but right here on the homefront. Now that’s a very bloody civil war I don’t look forward to.

justme95
you know I could have expect it, and IF they try to intimidate by force, other will join ,
they said peacefully,
now that it’s over, we try, it almost came through, but it’s dam if they get away with a corrupt election,
so the STATES are powerful, and able to give them a message with muscle.I can understand it,
look at the STATEN ISLAND PEOPLE CRYING FOR HELP WHILE THOSE WORKER, GOVERNMENT WORKERS WHERE BUSY ELECTING AND CONSOLIDATING OBAMA,
IT’S NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE IN AMERICA TO SEE HAPPENING,
ALABAMA WAS surely angry to have people leave to bring help and be told they cannot come in , they must join a UNION, THAT IS OUTRAGEOUS,
thank you for the info. we must follow it very carefully,
bye

justme95
that got me thinking, if it happen, the COMPANIES would move in to be sure they are free
from the all entitlement the fed try on them, it would bring wealth,
hopefully it will be resolve in a peaceful manner , but it will demand patience,
because it will take a long time of back and forth exchange purposely to delay
and delay and delay, with all the feds lawyers doing their bit of scare tactics,
bye

How that analogy work out!!

Clister Wortham
it mean; DESPITE what the POLLS SAY,
MITT ROMNEY will win by double digit..,,
ASSUMING THAT THE OBAMA VOTERS restrain from committing fraud
on all the votes in the four corners of AMERICA.
the double digits was removed by those who commit fraud,
bye