Comments on: Who Voted, and Why It Matters

By: Margaret

Margaret — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:49:35 +0000

“So Republicans have to work hard to get past the impression that they’re anti-immigrant and/or racist”. I have seen the mainstrain press create this image you just noted. ( along with the current ‘war on woman’ falsehood. ) For many, many years now, on every issue; life, economics, government, free enterpise, crushing debt, education, foreign policy, and more recently marriage and conscience protection, the major broadcast and print networks have overwhelmingly cast Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light. After the ‘lowest possible’? tactics by the Democrats in this last campaign, assisted by the press, does anyone believe that we still have a ‘two party system’?

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:38:45 +0000

I think Obama’s victory is pretty easy to understand. His premise was “Elect me and I’ll give you free stuff!” Romney’s was “Elect me and I’ll cut back on your free stuff.” I don’t usually think much of Rush Limbaugh as a thinker, but he did say something profoundly true this morning, in a nation of children, Santa Claus always wins.

By: Joseph Knippenberg

Joseph Knippenberg — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 00:08:34 +0000

It looks like the consensus is that turnout will be lower this time than last, that Obama’s fabled GOTV effort will have yielded at least 10% and maybe up to 15% fewer voters this time than last, and that Romney’s GOTV effort (much much better funded than McCain’s) wl fall short of his totals. Some of that can be blamed on Sandy (New York and New Jersey together have yielded about 2 million fewer voters this time than last) but that still leaves lots of missing voters unaccounted for.

By: bill bannon

bill bannon — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 23:18:49 +0000

Pardon the Biblical slip. I called McCain…”Cain”.

By: Gail Finke

Gail Finke — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 18:23:35 +0000

I am not a conspiracy theory person, but how can it be that fewer people voted for Romney than for McCain? I mean, seriously, how can that even be? NOBODY liked McCain (sorry, Mrs. McCain) and Obama was an unknown. A lot of people who didn’t like him were at least hopeful that he might do a good job after all. This year, at least in the last month or so, there was a lot of enthusiasm for Romney and some significant disenchantment with Obama. So how can the numbers be THAT close between the two, and how can the turnout for Romney be THAT low? It just doesn’t seem possible.

By: Dan C

Dan C — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:54:29 +0000

In 2004, Bush won re-election with a 50/48 win and 288 electoral votes. He was an incumbent war-time President.

This is for comparison to these re-election results. From a standpoint of incumbency, it looks very similar: the incumbent President in our very divided nation squeaked in with a minor majority.

By: Exit polling implies we should revise conventional wisdom given the age of polarization « thereformedmind

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:00:12 +0000

[...] From First Things blog: [...]

By: Joseph Knippenberg

Joseph Knippenberg — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:42:53 +0000

I realize that right now Obama is ahead of Romney 59 million to 57 million in the fictitious national popular vote and that last time it was 69 million to 59 million. This makes it look like a lower turnout for Romney than for McCain. When all the votes are counted, I expect both numbers to go up substantially (if the guess that aggregate turnout was about 134 million is accurate). In the end, then, I expect that Romney will have done better than McCain and Obama will have done worse, or at least no better, in 2012 than he did in 2008. (My assumption here is that the votes remaining to be counted will be distributed similarly to the votes that have already been counted. Even if I’m wrong about that, I find it impossible to believe that Romney will do so poorly among the votes yet to be counted that he will not comfortably exceed McCain’s totals.)

By: bill bannon

bill bannon — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:14:56 +0000

Lower republican turnout than in 2008 and national exit polls showed 50% of Americans blamed Bush for the economic woes not Obama as pressed by Romney constantly…(think over a trillion spent in Iraq by Bush which country has improved nil… and had no WMD).
Cain got over 2 million more votes than Romney.
Lower republican turnout.

By: David Nickol

David Nickol — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:07:12 +0000

It's inevitable that we are going to do this, but I wonder if there is not a real downside to picking apart the electorate like this. It used to be a cliche that the newly elected president declared himself president of all the people, and all but the most disappointed in the losing party said, "Well, the people have spoken, and even though I didn't vote for him, he's my president now." Now I think there is a tendency to think of Obama as the president of blacks and Hispanics but not of white people, the president of unmarried people and gay people but not of married people, and so on. So now we have a duly elected president, and unlike in many past presidential elections, the people who didn't vote for him will not be the loyal opposition. They'll just be the opposition. One hopes that this time around, the Republicans will recognize Obama's legitimacy and cooperate with him at least when it is in the best interest of the whole country. In the previous four years they made it clear their chief priority was to make Obama a one-term president, which resulted in such extreme opposition to many things Obama wanted that Republicans would change their previous positions just to avoid cooperation.