NEA Members Support Obama, Think Romney Is Best GOP Candidate

posted at 4:44 pm on January 17, 2012 by Mike Antonucci
[ Elections ]   

If history is any guide, this little snippet of news will lead to a lot of people contacting me to ask for more information, so I’ll let you know up front – this is all I have right now. When I learn what percentage Obama got, or what percentage Romney got, or how the other GOP candidates fared, I will certainly not delay in passing it along.

What I know now is, as part of its regular polling and surveying of NEA members, officers and activists, NEA asked respondents whom they preferred in the Presidential race. Obama won by a “substantial” margin, and Mitt Romney was the highest-ranking Republican candidate. The survey was taken in November 2011 or earlier, and so did not reflect the results of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.

I’ll leave it to the political pundits to determine whether this helps Romney or hurts him. As an organization, NEA only supports Republicans it considers to be moderate, and then usually only in primaries against more conservative opponents. However, NEA Republican members cover the full ideological spectrum, so their preferences don’t necessarily have to run toward the center.

Historically, the GOP Presidential nominee picks up about one-third of the NEA vote, without very large deviations from candidate to candidate. It’s possible that general disillusion among teachers about Obama, coupled with support for Romney, could alter the usual calculus, but Mike Huckabee’s experience from 2008 would argue against it.

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