As one who writes about everything political, one of the downsides of living in a state that is utterly unimportant from the Electoral College perspective is the fact that you’re insulated from much of the advertising campaigns that ravaged the battleground states. (From the perspective of a normal person however, that would likely be a blessing…)
I had friends who complained about not being able to get through an evening meal without getting robocalls. Others told of more campaign commercials than actual programming. I on the other hand saw one Barack Obama commercial during a nationally televised football game on Sunday and two Mitt Romney commercials the week before. Other than that, nada, the entire campaign.
That insulation from the billion dollar barrage skewed my perspective, at least as it relates to how the rest of the country was seeing this election. As a result, my prediction that Mitt Romney was going to win by double digits was… slightly off. I suggested that the polls were far from accurate for a variety of reasons from race to enthusiasm to undecided voters. By 8 PM on Tuesday it became clear I was lucky I had not bet my house on my prediction. I was wrong on every single point.
So how did I and so many others get it so wrong?
Maybe it was believing the hype about the effectiveness of the big dollars that drove the advertising I never saw. Romney did spend a lot, but it was money poorly spent. Why? Because he and his supporters outspent the Obama team across the board: In Ohio $97 million went to support Mitt while $90 went to support Barack Obama. In Virginia the numbers were $73 million vs. $65 million while in Florida they were $100 million vs. $78 million. And what did he get for all of that? Nothing. He needed those states and he lost all three.
Maybe it was ground game. This is art of getting your supporters to the polls but it’s often hard to see beforehand. And it’s particularly important in union stronghold states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nevada, states Romney thought he would or at least could win. In all four Romney exceeded McCain’s 2008 totals, while the president underperformed his. It wasn’t enough. In a year where the enthusiasm gap was widely expected to favor the challenger the GOP failed in the closest thing to basic blocking and tackling, getting supporters to the polls.
Then there was Hurricane Sandy. As expected, turnout was down in reliably blue New York and New Jersey. The real impact, unforeseen by me however, was far beyond the storm. It was in the rest of the country where they were reading about it. Sandy did three things. One, she stunted Romney’s ascent and took him off the front page. Two, she kicked Benghazi to the back burner. Three, she gave the media a much desired backdrop upon which to project a very presidential Barack Obama.
These combined to help Mitt Romney lose the presidency. They do not however explain the surprise. That was something all together different: Enthusiasm. I for one expected GOP enthusiasm to be off the charts. It wasn’t. After four years of Barack Obama’s socialist policies one would have expected conservatives, Tea Party types, libertarians and Republicans to head to the polling stations with pitchforks and torches and ready to throw out anyone dressed in blue. Surprisingly, they did not. Indeed, Romney was not even able to get the same number of votes McCain did. Romney received two million fewer votes, despite having the worst economic recovery in a century and four years of progressivism against which to campaign.
At the end of the day, Mitt Romney lost because he did not sufficiently articulate why Americans should go out and vote for him. He is a good and decent man and he attracted 49% of the vote. But elections are about winning. A nation doesn’t need a manager who says “Vote for me because I’ll do a better job than that guy”, it needs a leader who says “Vote for me because I’ll do this and I won’t do that”. Barack Obama left Christopher Stevens as a sitting duck and in the end he and three other Americans died. Americans barely heard a peep about that from Mitt Romney. Barack Obama and Eric Holder have the blood of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American Border Patrol agent on their hands; again, crickets from Mitt Romney.
Millions of illegal immigrants cross into the country each year and Mitt Romney talked about “self deportation”. Obamacare is destroying jobs while the IRS is arming to enforce its mandates and Mitt Romney equivocated. The tax code costs Americans half a trillion dollars a year and restrains the creation of millions of jobs and Mitt Romney promises to fiddle with some opaque “middle class tax cuts”.
In 1964 Barry Goldwater said “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”. In 2012 that was not a problem. Today’s adage might be “Milquetoast in the defense of liberty is no defense at all”. At a moment in time when Americans needed a man to arouse them and lead them out of the thickening forest of liberalism they instead got a man who wanted to discuss how to prune some low hanging branches. It should have been no surprise they chose to stick with Johnny Appleseed.
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I happen to live in one of the states that was at least marginally a battle ground state, Wisconsin, and I can tell you that by the end of it all the commercials had become nauseating.
My wife is a confrmed blue to her core liberal while I am a hardcore fiscal conservative which makes for some lively arguments in our house.
Even then between the Romney, Obama, Tammy Baldwin and Tommy Thompson commercials we started muting the volume on our TV during these commercials 3 weeks before election night because we knew them by heart and they would play 3 to 5 of these things in a row, it was non-stop…If I got one robocall from the RNC I must have gotten a 100 of them. We literally stopped answering the phone in the evening because it became that damn annoying.
The reason conservatives lost is because we didn’t run as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny all wrapped up in one. People want to hear that nothing is going to change because for the most part people despise change.
They wanted to hear it was all going to be alright although at least some of them who do have a brain have to know you are only going to be able to squeeze the golden goose for so long before it croaks.
People want their theoretical free stuff without having to pay for it because they deserve it even if they didn’t earn it.
For me this election cycle was a referendum on what I called the tipping point, were there more takers than makers out there and were they willing to vote that way? The answer was yes, we are slowly working our way to becoming a nation of moochers.
Mitts real crime with his 47% comment is that he was being brutally honest and people don’t always want to hear the truth especially when you may be talking about them.
Fortunately the state of Wisconsin stayed red internally. We regained the state senate and increased our majority in the assembly, so even if we didn’t help the nation by foisting a complete idiot like Tammy Baldwin on you, Gov. Walker and our state legislatures can at least do the right thing for Wisconsin citizens.
@Bobachek: People want to hear that nothing is going to change because for the most part people despise change.
They wanted to hear it was all going to be alright although at least some of them who do have a brain have to know you are only going to be able to squeeze the golden goose for so long before it croaks.
Budvarakbar says:The upper middle class — and pretty much everyone else of all classes have been strangling the goose for over 30 years. Past time to admit that the shelves are bare and it is time to close the candy store.
I agree with that comment and honestly I am willing to start making those sacrifices because I know the longer we wait to make changes that need to be made, the harder it is going to be to do.
I hold little illusion that the Obama admin will address the debt crisis facing this nation and I honestly didn’t think Romney would either but Paul Ryan gave me some hope that at least that conversation would begin in earnest. Now we get 4 more years of grid lock and massive debt increases with little hope that much of anything will begin to change. We keep screwing around like we our and we may get to a point where we can no longer save ourselves finanacially and that will be a very ugly day.
What the hell did they expect? Republicans all hate Obamacare (as does the majority of the nation,), so the party in their infinite stupidity gives us Obama-lite. The Establishment Republicans can not win an election without the rest of the party. They have to get that through their thick sculls first. Aside from campaigning with a message of the need to keep Obama from a second term, there was virtually nothing about Romney to bring Conservative or Libertarian’s of the party to either trust or want to put Romney in office. In other words, aside from selecting Ryan as a running mate, the Establishment Republicans did not try to appeal to the base. It might have helped if Romney had given more than vague suggestions of what he would do in office. Republicans have been shooting themselves in the foot for decades by selecting a plethora of loud-mouth stupidly opinionated morons for Senatorial races and the party electorate are getting tired of it.
Republicans need to listen to and reach out to everyday Americans. Promising an end to “the death tax” which doesn’t affect most of the people, isn’t going to do it. Nor are soap box speeches about protecting those who make $250,000+ from over-taxation, going to move the majority who make much less or the masses of unemployed. By continuing to talk about those issues the Establishment Republicans were playing right into Obama’s hands.
What Romney should have talked about was what was going to happen over the next two years if Obama won. He should have spoke about Benghazi and how Obama’s policy are making things more dangerous and unstable in the Middle-East. He should have mentioned the many ways that Obama has been giving more and more power to the bureaucracy. He should have also explained in detail how a Romney presidency would create jobs. He should have hit the people with the hard truth that we can not pay for all the entitlements that the Democrats used to buy votes. The people respect politicians who will tell them the unvarnished truth, but Romney decided to play another smiling nice-guy McCain candidate when he should have taken a “Look, this is how it is.” By giving us another milquetoast campaign and letting the Democrats (and their media cheerleaders) control the message, the Establishment leadership ensured that Obama would gain a second term.
That is why Republican and conservative citizens need to quit whining about the election, get off their butts and reform their party from the ground up. They need to go to the meetings, get vocal and active with the local and state party bosses and “put the fear of god” in them. We all need to make it clear that the masses of the GOP electorate are fed up with the way these clowns are mismanaging this party, and that we no longer have confidence in their leadership. We need to start planning now for 2014.
Actually, Republican need to stop listening to their own polls and pay attention to more objective polls (Gallup and Rasmussen were among the bottom four in potential accuracy, with the highest margin of error).
I made precisely the same point to a friend of mine (my manager actually) a couple of months ago, in the context of our company, and American companies in general. It fits Mittens like a . . . glove. I made the point several times on several blogs, the government is not a business, though it’s been run like one for too long (poorly, admittedly).
The purpose of a business is to increase revenue and grow. . . sound like any other institution we discuss around here? The purpose of the federal government is to do the absolute minimum as proscribed by the Constitution . . . sounds like nothing we discuss around here.
DITTO EXACTLY How you gonna win an election when your base is people making over $250,ooo.
“Repubs need to reach out to every day people” Ya think?
With the current mindset of the Repubs and the changing demographics,it’s only going to get worse in 2014 and beyond.
@Richard Wheeler:
Wealthy Republicans are not “the base” anymore than the wealthy Democrats are their own party. But in both parties it is true that wealthy tend to comprise the party leadership.
I wrote so didn’t I? However, I don’t consider radicals of any extreme leftist or right-wing ideological bent to be representative of “everyday people”. As both parties are more and more comprised of factions, they have left or lost most of the independent voters or “everyday people.” This is shown by the huge numbers of people who think that there isn’t much of a true difference between the parties, other than that they don’t represent their positions or they have been so disillusioned with both parties that they don’t even bother anymore, figuring that the politicians will just do what they want to do anyway.
The result is that less that half of those adults edible to vote, are registered to, and (in most precincts,) votes cast are often much less than the number of registered voters. That makes a whole lot of people who have not been represented in the election, a demographic that could be courted by the right campaign.
Hence, what I and other conservatives have written should be considered, and not what the Democrats tell us we have to do. Republicans can appeal to other demographics without becoming Democrat-lite. Part of the reason Romney lost was because he did not energize many of the true Republican base. Those Republicans who didn’t vote because they figured that Obama and Romney were too similar, could have turned around the election. But Romney decided not to even bother trying to appeal to any but the Establishment portion of the party, and he did a very poor job of explaining his agenda. (Never mind that Obama didn’t bother put forth an agenda other than “tax the rich”). As I have written, the Establishment leadership has shown nothing but disdain for party libertarians, conservatives and “the Tea Party.” As a result, many of those voters had little incentive to support Romney. They may have liked Ryan, but the VP choice alone will not win you the election. It is not sensible nor reasonable for the Republican party to even try to become a mirror image of the Democratic party, only that they get their heads out of their butts and stop being simply “the party of business.” They need instead to return to the basic constitutional, small government roots of the party, and reform it in a way that will appeal to workers, families, immigrants, management, minorities, constitutionalists, small business, and everyone who loves the promise of restoration of the American Dream.
Ditto No question that a large # of eligible voters are not registered and an unacceptably large % of registered voters stay home.
Some here at F.A.suggest substantial # of Conservs,/Repubs stayed home because they saw Mitt as “Dem.lite” In the small test group here (50-70) approx? I’ve seen only Mata. Are there many others?
I don’t believe Connervs. saw Romney much differently than they saw Mac. Am I wrong? The big difference in the reduced 2012 VOTE was UNENTHUSED DEMS. STAYED HOME—some 7 million. Obama total vote and % down across the board—with one glaring exception. Latino vote was up substantially in % and hard votes. IMO their turnout for BHO in crucial states secured the win.
They brought victory in Fl. Va. and helped in other swing states like Col. Nev. and Ohio. Of the crucial 11 or 12 swing states Mitt won ONLY N.C.
Would like to see numbers on proclaimed Conservs. who voted in 2008 vs 2012.
the wealthy MITT would have made a lot more people wealthy and other working for a lifetime,
that’s when you save nuggets,
as oppose to the OBAMA AGENDA to have the UNIONS HARASS THE BUSINESS TO BE ON THEIR SIDE,
REMEMBER that OBAMA was not trying to be elected alone, he was trying to be elected with the multi thousands unions members AND THEIR UNION BOSS WHO RUN THE GOVERNMENT, THAT IS MORE PRESIDENTS WITH OBAMA,
MITT WAS ONLY WITH HIS VICE PRESIDENT SEEKING THE POSITION TO ENTER THE WHITE HOUSE AS ONE PRESIDENT ALONE AND ONE VICE PRESIDENT ALONG HIS SIDE,
THIS WAS AN IMPOSSIBLE TASK GIVEN TO HIM,
BUT HE BRAVELY TOOK IT WHERE NO ONE WOULD HAVE DONE IT WITH CLASS, AND REFRAIN FROM DOING THE SAME VICIOUS ATTACK WHICH OBAMA BOMBARD HIM AS A KILLER OF A PERSON
HE DID NOT EVEN KNOW, THAT IS A VERY DANGEROUS GAME HE PLAYED, IT WILL BOUNCE BACK AT HIM, EVENTUALY,
BUT MITT ROMNEY LEFT AS CLASSY AS HE CAME, STILL RICH AND HAPPY TO HAVE GIVEN HIS ALL TO WIN BECAUSE HE KNEW HE COULD HELP,
HE MANAGE TO BRING MORE THAN HALF THE AMERICANS ON HIS SIDE, BUT THE CORRUPTION
DID MAKE MANY DISAPPEAR FROM THE VOTES THEY CAST, BECAUSE THE CORRUPT KNEW HOW TO DO IT,FROM 2008, AND YEARS OF LEARNING,
Ms Bees Both Romney and Ryan have been classy in accepting defeat graciously and congratulating Obama for a hard fought and fair victory.
Maybe you could learn from them.
Richard Wheeler
I always learn from those I value the most.there are many here,
Richard Wheeler
it’s also better to elect a wealthy person,
then you know he will take office with his family already dress,
so it save the money which belong to the PEOPLE, BESIDE THEY CAN BRING THEIR VERY EXPANSIVES FURNITURE THEY ARE USE TO ENJOY, because they meet the stander of looking good
in the WHITE HOUSE, AND AGAIN A BIG SAVING ON THE PEOPLE’S MONEY.
BESIDE THEY LIKE MITT ROMNEY HAVE THE CLASS TO HOST THE LEADERS OF THE WORLD IN A
MANNER WHICH IS NECESSARY FOR THE IMAGE OF THIS GRAND AMERICA, AND THEY KNOW DIPLOMATIC PROTOCOL ALREADY FROM THE BEGINNING,
ALL THOSE THINGS ARE SO IMPORTANT FOR A LEADER TO DO IT CORRECTLY. SO IT LESS EMBARRASSING FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO ARE SO PROUD,
SO TO BE RICH ALREADY IS A BIG PLUS, IT’S A REQUIREMENT,
@Richard Wheeler:
I too considered Mitt “Obama-lite,” but because of the way Obama has used the bureaucracy to bypass Congress, I voted for for Mitt only because I considered the “lite” version still slightly better for America and the Constitution than the original hi-test Koolaid king. Did I like Romney? Absolutely not! I thought he was an asinine choice for the GOP nomination. Incidentally, I don’t “hate” Obama, I do hate most of what his presidency and his Chicago machine politics has done to this nation. I can’t speak for anyone else. Frankly, I didn’t trust either one of them. (Ryan however, I like.)
Conservatives respected MacCain’s military service. They also respected Romney’s business back ground. It was their political positions and record that they didn’t support.
And many unenthusiastic Republicans also stayed home because Romney was not reflective of what they felt America needs in a leader. Obama also lost quite a few Republicans who crossed over in 2008 to vote for him.
Don’t forget Libertarian Republicans. It would also be interesting how many “moderate”/”conservative Democrats stayed home. Although I think it is more meaningful when you compare the demographics for the last three decades.
@ilovebeeswarzone:
On this I’m going to have to strongly disagree Bees. There are far too many wealthy persons in office. That is why they are out of touch with the everyday people. The elite have nothing in common with them. What is needed is more middle-class representatives.
Ditto Thanks My question to F.A. Conservs, was ” How many actually “STAYED HOME’. So far only Mata.
My assertion is Mitt didn’t lose for that reason but for reasons discussed above.
btw Ryan you may like but Rubio would have given him a better chance.
@Richard Wheeler:
Rich, not saying that you are incorrect in asserting that Romney didn’t lose because conservatives stayed home, but to use such a small sample size as we conservatives here at FA doesn’t prove a thing.
And, in all actuality, it probably, if it could be accepted, would prove you to be incorrect. Remember, no one has claimed that ALL conservatives, or a majority of conservatives, stayed home on election day.
Consider the number being floated around on various blogs and by pundits. 3 million or so. But we will call it 3 million even. When the numbers of total votes get broken down and divided by democrat, independent, and conservative, Romney got roughly 35 million votes from those who identified as conservative. Add on the 3 million claimed to have stayed home, and we get 38 million. 3 million of 38 million is 8%, roughly. But even that isn’t exactly correct as Obama got around 17% of the conservative vote, or roughly 7 million of them. Add that on and we get 45 million conservatives who voted, at least by CNN’s exit polling. That 8% of supposed “non-voting” conservatives becomes 6.7%.
Extrapolated out, then, if we consider Mata to be the only conservative on FA to not vote, 15 conservatives will have voted. Can you name at least 15 self-described conservatives at FA, who come here more than once in a blue moon, and regularly contribute comments and postings? Off the top of my head, I came up with 17, though I may be missing one or two. Using these numbers, and including an “extra 6.7%” who would have voted for Obama (I don’t think any conservative here did), that means that on this blog, 1.4 people would have to be shown to have not voted at all for President.
All that means is that the example of Mata, if indeed she was the only conservative to have not voted for president here at FA, is well within any kind of margin of error for a claim that 3 million actual conservatives stayed home.
All that to say that using FA as an example trying to prove your assertion is worthless.
And, as well, I will again point out that I am not saying your assertion is wrong, Rich. Nor am I agreeing that it is right, especially as the numbers seem to support the 3 million claim.
Note: For clarification purposes, I used the CNN.com exit polling data.
John Thanks I think we can agree a lot more unenthused Dems stayed home than unenthused Conservs.
If Romney had tacked right to pick up Conservs. he would have lost at least an equal amount of indies,moderate Repubs and cross over Dems. Same to be said if Gingrich or Santorum Conserv. had been nominated.
From the gitgo one given was BHO would NOT do as well as 2008. It would be CLOSE. I believe the increased Latino turnout,fueled by Romney comments,made the difference– Fl. Va.–help in Co. Nev. and Ohio. Studies also show Obama youth vote held strong in the swing states through strong,directed “ground game.”
Again I say a Rubio pick for Veep would have made this race even tighter.
@Richard Wheeler:
I don’t agree with that at all, Rich.
For clarification, the claim is that 3 million Republicans stayed home, not 3 million conservatives. There is a difference between them. The exit polling doesn’t necessarily support this claim, at least by CNN, but it also doesn’t support your claim that “a lot more” unenthused Democrats than Conservatives, or even Republicans, stayed home.
Using the 2008 and 2012 election exit polling data from cnn, Obama got 89% of the 39% Democrat block in 2008, for a vote tally of roughly 43.5 million votes from that block. In 2012 Obama received 92% of the 38% Democrat block, for a vote tally of roughly 42.6 million votes, from that block. Given statistical margins of errors when talking about polling, the number is roughly the same.
Not sure about the “swing state” youth vote, Rich, but overall Obama lost a lot in that category. In 2008 Obama received 66% of the 18% voting block comprised of 18-29 age group, for a vote tally of 14.88 million votes. In 2012 Obama received 60% of a 19% voting block of 18-29 yr. olds, for a vote tally of 13.88 million. A one million vote difference in a category that actually GAINED voters in this most recent election. Now, since the category actually gained voters, it could be said that he “held strong”, as you say, but then you’d have to concede that the category was a strong one for Romney as well, being that he would have then gained most of the “new” voters in that category.
Semantics and parsing, for sure, but as in everything polls “tell us”, the answers are purely subjective and tied to a person’s perspective.
As I said, I don’t necessarily believe that Republican, or conservative, voters stayed home, but I don’t believe that Democrats did either. If anything, it was the unenthused moderates staying home that Romney couldn’t gain that made all the difference. But, even as they stayed home and didn’t vote for Romney, they ALSO stayed home and didn’t vote for Obama.
J.G. #’s that matter 362-203. 61 million- 58 million. My assertion If EVERY Conservative who “stayed home” had an early wake up, a nutritious breakfast, a ride to the polls,and votes for POTUS—Mitt still loses.
@Richard Wheeler:
That is 332-206, Rich. 100 electoral votes for the number of Senators, 435 for the number of Representatives, and 3 more for the District of Columbia. Your numbers are off quite a bit.
And to contrast this election with 2008, Obama lost 33 electoral votes, or 6% of the lead he had in 2008.
But yes, those EC votes are what matter, Rich, and Obama won. However, when you consider the minimum EC votes of 270 to win, the big three battleground states plus NV(at 5 EC votes would give Romney a 271 total), the numbers aren’t quite so big.
Consider, in 2008 Obama won OH, VA, FL and NV by 850,000 votes. Adding the vote totals together, along with the shares garnered by Obama and McCain, Obama won those states by a 4.5% margin. Those same states, in 2012 gave a difference of only 350,000 votes, roughly 87,500 per, in favor of Obama, and a winning margin of only 1%.
On top of that, those states totaled roughly 18.567 million votes in 2008, and 18.375 million votes in 2012, for a difference of 192,000 votes. That voter turnout is only down 1%, roughly, while the national average was a 2.8% drop in voter turnout.
Where am I going with this? That Obama’s victory, while being a large margin in terms of EC votes, was actually a very narrow margin of victory in the states that actually did, or could have(in the case of NV), decide the election. Decisive victory? Hardly, when all of the numbers are broken down.
If anything, Rich, it tells us that the blue states got more blue, while the red states got more red, and the handful of states that have decided the past 4 elections, more or less, have become even closer to being a 50/50 split.
When looked at in that light, along with a gain by the GOP in the House, Obama doesn’t have anything close to a mandate to do anything other than work with the GOP. And likewise for the GOP, to work with Obama.
J.G. Thanks TYPO 332 not 362. No question election closer in 2012 vs. 2008. Would love to see Dems and Repubs. work together. It’s clear this is what the voters want.
Even closer was Kerry’s loss in 2004. Needed approx100,000 more votes in ONE state–Ohio to be Prez.
THINGS are getting dangerous abroad,
ISRAEL have enough of getting the rocket’s attacks
they now start to go get them on their own turf
I think the ESBOLA have been ask to start the fight with the IRANIANS ROCKETS,
AND EGYPT is in the deal and LIBYA BENGHASI GROUP AND THE ALQAEDA from all over the MUSLIM COUNTRIES, now that SYRIA REVOLTUTION is almost over
do I miss some, yes more than one,
but what I find dangerous is that ISRAEL IF THEY GO IN PALESTINE, MIGHT BE TRAP IN THERE FROM THE OTHER MUSLIM BROTHER COMING FROM ALL THE SURROUNDING ,
MAYBE that is what the plan is from IRAN.
SO they better stay put in their own land, and use the rockets also. and be help by friendly Countries,
LIKE US