Anyway, Obama wins with 51% (~62 million) of the popular vote to Romney's 48% (~59 million), and that managed to translate into 332 to 206 Electoral Votes. So many different things to consider and discuss that I don't know how to arrange things, so the post may be a little jumbled.
First some interesting data: the overall popular vote was down from 2008, even though there are more registered voters now. Obama got 10 million fewer votes than he did in 2008, Romney got 3 million fewer votes than the pathetic 2008 Republican nominee McCain did. McCain's vote total would have beaten Obama this year. More data:
Ethnicity/Gender Ratio:
White Men - Romney 64% Obama 35%
White Women - Romney 57% Obama 42%
Hispanic Men - Obama 65% Romney 34%
Hispanic Women - Obama 76% Romney 23%
Black Men - Obama 87% Romney 12%
Black Women - Obama 96% Romney 3%
Asian Total - Obama 73% Romney 26%
Generational Ratios:
Marital Ratio:
Married Men - no data
Married Women - Romney 53% Obama 46%
Unmarried Men - Obama 56% Romney 43%
Unmarried Women - Obama 67% Romney 32%
Dem-Rep-Ind Split:
Democrat Ratio: 92% Obama 7% Romney
Republican Ratio:
Independent Ratio: 50% Romney 45% Obama
If anyone knows of a good website that can fill in the missing information above, let me know and I'll update the article. I thought I would be able to find the age breakdowns, but haven't.
I figured Romney would win a relatively close election. I figured the partisan split would be something like halfway between the electorate of 2008 and that of 2010. Obamamania could not still exist. The partisan split of 2008 was DEM +7, that of 2010 was I think REP +1, but it might have been DEM +1. Regardless, I expected DEM +3. With Independents breaking for Romney, I figured this would give Romney the popular vote closely, though the Electoral Vote was going to be tough. I figured enough swing states would fall Romney's way to give him the victory.
In the campaign, Obama campaigned towards his base and Romney, after the Primaries, campaigned towards the middle. This indicated to me that Romney had the advantage, that Obama was desperate to have to campaign hard for the base. However, the polls show that that campaign paid off for him.
As The Huffington Post says:
As the exit polls showed, Obama won the popular vote despite losing to Romney handily among independents. Independents preferred Romney to Obama 50 to 45 percent. This was only the second time in the last 10 elections that the winner lost the independent vote, and in the only other time it occurred the margin was much closer, as Bush lost independents to Kerry by just 2 points, 51 to 49 percent.Even though we saw no Obamania like we saw in 2008, the Democrats turned out in force while Republicans tended to sit on their hands, even though anyone paying attention knew how important this election was.
The reason Obama was able to overcome this deficit was that many more Democrats than Republicans turned out to vote. The Democrats held a 6-point advantage over Republicans among voters in 2012, down only a single point from 2008. Since Democrats supported their nominee by a whopping 92-7 margin, Obama was able to overcome losing independents, even by a significant margin.
Pollsters and other analysts focused on a gender gap, that Obama had a large advantage with women that Romney wasn't going to be able to overcome, however, the results don't quite bear that out.
As The Atlantic says regarding the gender gap:
In other words, if you want to place a bet on how someone will vote and you have to choose between knowing that person's gender or their race/ethnicity, you're better off learning their race or ethnicity. That marker is more telling.The one critical statistic above is the race of the voter. If I had the age statistics, that may be another critical factor, but, as with gender, it probably is not as telling as race. The marital status probably ties more into the fact that Whites have a far higher marriage ratio than other ethnic groups (Asians probably are high too but still too small a percentage of the population to affect the marriage ratio).
I'm not going to take the time to produce the poll results, but on questions of who would best take care of the problems important to voters, Romney was leading on almost every catagory, including the (by far) most important question of the Economy. But, rather than vote for the person they thought would take care of the problems, minorities voted strongly for the candidate who was Not White. Though Whites voted strongly for Romney, they weren't as unified a voting bloc as the minority groups were. Even Asians, who get screwed worse even than Whites on Affirmative Action policies and would also suffer even worse on Obama's redistributionist policies voted overwhelmingly for the Affirmative Action president.
A President who took a recession and made it worse and longer with his Socialist policies, who advanced policies that weakened America and its allies around the world (his Administration's feckless handling of Benghazi is a chief example), and who did everything he could to exacerbate racial tensions in America was re-elected.
It could be argued, probably rightly, that Blacks and Latinos would consider the redistributionist policies of the president to be in their best interest, but this wouldn't hold for Asians who have a higher standard of living than Whites.
But, it is not just the extreme racial vote that did Romney in; as stated above, the vote total for Romney is down from that of McCain. How can that be, when the energy for Romney seemed to be way higher than it was during the perfect Democrat storm of 2008? That is the thing that I really do not understand: the Republican or White or whatever voters that sat on their hands this election. I don't know how someone could have been motivated to vote for McCain in 2008 and not be motivated to vote for Romney in 2012.
An evenly-matched electorate, in which Independents favored Romney, should have given the election to Romney. Instead Conservatives stayed home. Why?
Why did we re-elect this complete failure of a President?
Because what the majority of Americans want now is free stuff from the Government, and we have a government eager to hand it to them. This to me seems to signal the end of a functioning Democracy.
 |
| Time to build a bunker |
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMarc Faber says buy a machine gun and Jim Rogers, a billionare investor, says disaster is now guaranteed. One thing to keep in mind is that our elected officials are a reflection on the American people. Americans will get the leaders they deserve and America deserves Obama. (Jesse Jackson Jr. got reelected even after he had been absent from offfice and in a clinic for several months due to him have a mental breakdown and mental health issues.) The sad reality is that close to 50% of Americans want the type of government that Obama has to offer. The character of the American people has been slowly transformed through "a long slow march through the institutions". The education system and popular culture has been dominated by liberal intellectuals for the past 70 years or so, and they have slowly transformed the character of the American people away from a character that values freedom, responsiblity, and limited government to the exact opposite.
ReplyDeleteThe reason the Republicans lost was that they nominated a liberal, or a "nice loser" http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/11/13/creators_oped , who did not motivate the base and who was almost indistinguishable on major issues from Obama. Romney refused to expose Obama for the radical that he is. Early on in the campaign Romney distanted himself from an ad by a superpac that attacked Obama's past connection to Jermiah Wright. Romney portrayed Obama as a "nice guy" that was in over his head while at the same time Obama was running on of the most vicious political campaigns in modern history that was accusing Romney of killing a man's wife among other untrue things. The Republican party and Romney had the responsibility to the American people to tell them who Obama was. Obama is a radical revolutionary that wants to "fundamentaly transform America" and done exactly that in his first term. The America people had the right to know about Obama's past and current connections to radicals: his father was a socialist; his mentor mentioned in Obama's book was a hard-core communist Frank Marshall Davis; his pastor for 20 years was a radical that hates white people and despises America and preaches "God damn America" from the pulpit; the pastor that gave a bendiction at Obama's inaguration said all white people are going to hell; Obama's current spirtual advisor Jim Wallis calls for the redistribution of wealth and ascribes to the communist social justice view of Christianity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2d--egjByE ; Obama launched his political career in the living room of a guy who bombed the pentagon and says he would do it again; Obama has surrounded himself while in office with radicals and self described communist Van Jones, Carol Browner, Anita Dunn, Ron Bloom, Valier Jarret, and others; Obama has weakend American internationally and Romney can't even bring this up in the 3rd debate; Obama has expanded the nation debt to record levels that will cripple our nation and destory our ways of life; and I could on and on. Romney and the Republicans did not bring any of this up, instead they portrayed him as a "nice guy" that was "just in over his head". Americas had the right to know who Obama is.
The sad fact is that the Republican party and the Democrat party are indisinguishable on the major issues, and looking back at history the government has grown roughly the same amount under both parties. This should be very evident to you after Romney was nominated. After the massive lost on Nov 6 the Republican party is moving to the left not to the right as they should. They are saying that we need to be more like the Democracts. John Boehner gave up on fighting Obamacare.
If America is to move back towards the principles that made this the greatest nation to have existed in human history, then it will have to be through a third party. But this would require a cultural revolution among the American people and this won't happen.
ReplyDeleteWhat is happening in America is the exact same thing that has happened to all free people throughout history: "A democracy[America was founded as a Republic] cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorhip. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. The nations have progressed through this sequence: 'from bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage."
Obama has and will continue to "fundamentally transform America" to an extent that can't be reversed.We are going into a global dark age of sorts where freedom will recede and give way to tyranny and oppression.
America and the world will experience a major global meltdown/near-collapse in our lifetimes due to massive and unstanable debt that will transform the relationship between the governed and the government the world over and affect each and every one of our lives by under cutting the base of maslow's hierachy of human needs. This will probably happen within a decade or two, could be in the next 4 years. Obama being reelected has just moved the time that this event will happen a little, maybe a lot, closer. One thing is for sure: nothing meaingful in the next four years will be done to prevent the "most predictable crisis"--according to Paul Ryan-- in human history. Now is the time to educate yourself and to prepare for the new world that is coming.
You make very many good points, Jeff, but it doesn't explain how someone who was motivated to vote for McCain in 2008 would not be motivated to vote for Romney four years later.
ReplyDeleteThe reports on voter fraud I've seen say it has not been great enough to tip any of the states, and, where there is fraud, it's generally in the places like Philly, where it would amount to increasing the vote for Obama, not decreasing the vote for Romney.
The case of the missing Conservative voter:
- Was it Christian Fundamentalists not able to vote for a Mormon?
- Was it a case of too many people who decided not to vote? But it seems that people who wouldn't vote for Romney for the reasons Jeff gives for not voting for him wouldn't have voted for McCain either
- Are older, whiter voters dying off in numbers that are making a difference?
I don't know. I haven't read that anyone has discovered the answer.
A lot of conservatives were not happy with the liberal/moderate McCain but sucked it up and voted for him anyways, and after seeing him loose in 08 people were not motivated to go vote for an even more liberal/moderate candidate in 12. It could be that people are starting to wake up and realize that the difference between republicans and democracts are not that big and realize that they don't have much of a choice in elections and are protesting by not voting. Obama received a lot less votes this time. I voted for McCain in 08 because I was not that informed on the issues and was still under the impression that republicans were good and democracts are bad. After experiencing the Obama years and loosing my job, I woke up and started educating myself and forced myself to accept some hard truths about the situation America and the world finds itself in.
ReplyDeleteOn white people dying off http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/11/14/creators_oped
More money printing is on the way ""A number of participants indicated that additional asset purchases would likely be appropriate next year after the conclusion of the maturity extension program in order to achieve a substantial improvement in the labor market," the Fed said." http://www.cnbc.com/id/49825612
Romney sucked. He didn't inspire anybody. I think he turned a lot of conservatives away. Ask Jeff.
ReplyDeleteRomney is a liberal. That's why he got so many independents but was weak with his own people. If we had a conservative running for conservatives, we could have pulled this out.
Toe
Romney was certainly a flawed candidate, but I'm not sure there was anyone else who could have done better. Certainly no one to the right of Romney was in the running who would inspire the country as a whole. That was Perry's downfall. What we saw in the election was that the electorate, ie those motivated enough to try to make decisions for the country, is a center-left rather than center-right critter. I discount conservatives who chose not to vote.
ReplyDeleteAnd Romney chose Ryan to be his VP, the man MOST qualified to do what needs to be done. If that didn't inspire those conservatives, than nothing will, and we can count on them doing nothing positive but sulking on the sidelines and blaming everyone else for their problems.
We won't get a perfect candidate. And our chance is now past, I believe, as demographics and Republican wishes to make themselves more electable to minorities will destroy any reason for anyone to vote Republican.
No, sitting out this election guarantees years in the wilderness for conservatives now and removes any hope of averting fiscal disaster. And it is and was clear to see, and it is a choice those stay-at-home conservatives clearly made. I cannot respect that.
One factor on the voter turnout for both Obama and Romney that was not mentioned was the hurricane Sandy. I read that that had some effect on voter turnout.
ReplyDeleteI know that this is very hard to believe and to accept, but there is very little difference between the democrats and republicans. What am I saying? Romney and Obama were not all that different? People say: "That is crazy. No way. Impossible. Obama is a crazy socialist and Romney isn't." I am sure that there are some descriptive psychological terms that can be used to illustrate this. The bottom line was that Romney was no conservative. He is a Massachusetts liberal. He could not articulate conservative principles. He had to attempt to speak it as a second language. He could not attack Obama. Saying that there is no perfect candidate is an excuse or reason to vote for a socialist doesn't cut it for me. Ryan was not budget cutter as is widely believed. All I can say about trying to understand this is that you have to look at history and be willing to accept some hard uncomfortable truths. On the health care issue, America was going to get a single payer system no matter who won. That is the way that the cards were going to be dealt by the leadership of our country. It was predetermined. The fact that the republican establishment chose Romney long before it was clear that he would win the nomination speaks volumes about what that party stands for. By the majority of Americans choosing to participate in a farce that is elections, they are allowing it to continue. A cultural revolution needs to take place that will give rise to a third party that stands for limited government, personal responsibility, and freedom. The new battle field is in the cultural and education systems. Not politics.
Kyle Bass has an interesting 20 page report that is worth reading. http://kylebassblog.blogspot.com/
ReplyDelete"Central banks have become the great enablers of fiscal profligacy. They have removed the proverbial policemen from the bond market highway. If central banks purchase the entirety of incremental bond issuance used to finance fiscal deficits, the checks and balances of “normal” market interest rates are obscured or even eliminated altogether. This market phenomenon does nothing to encourage the body politic to take their foot off the spending accelerator. It is both our primary fear and unfortunately our prediction that this quixotic path of spending and printing will continue ad?infinitum until real cost?push inflation manifests itself. [...] Through travel and meetings around the world, it has become clear to us that most investors possess a heavily anchored bias that has been engrained in their belief systems mostly through inductive reasoning. Using one of the Nobel Laureate Daniel Khaneman's theories, participants fall under an availability heuristic whereby they are able to process information using only variables that are products of recent data sets or events. Let’s face it – the brevity of financial memory is shorter than the half?life of a Japanese finance minister.
Humans are optimistic by nature. People’s lives are driven by hopes and dreams which are all second derivatives of their innate optimism. Humans also suffer from optimistic biases driven by the first inalienable right of human nature which is self?preservation. It is this reflex mechanism in our cognitive pathways that makes difficult situations hard to reflect and opine on. These biases are extended to economic choices and events. The fact that developed nation sovereign defaults don’t advance anyone’s self?interest makes the logical outcome so difficult to accept. The inherent negativity associated with sovereign defaults brings us to such difficult (but logical) conclusions that it is widely thought that the powers that be cannot and will not allow it to happen. The primary difficulty with this train of thought is the bias that most investors have for the baseline facts: they tend to believe that the central bankers, politicians, and other governmental agencies are omnipotent due to their success in averting a financial meltdown in 2009. [...] And finally, a less than rosy outlook for the entire "developed" world."
"Trillions of dollars of debts will be restructured and millions of financially prudent savers will lose large percentages of their real purchasing power at exactly the wrong time in their lives. Again, the world will not end, but the social fabric of the profligate nations will be stretched and in some cases torn."