Values, not demographics, won the election
Such conventional indicators failed to capture the mind-set of the American people who always had a broader view of the nation’s economic situation and what had happened to their lives. A national survey of 800 voters conducted by our firm — not for the Obama campaign — during the final weekend before Tuesday’s vote, confirmed that a clear majority of Americans viewed this election in the context of the scale of the economic crisis we faced and the deep recession that ensued.
Two key data points illustrate why Americans were always far more open to President Obama’s message and accomplishments than commentators assumed. By a three to one margin (74 percent to 23 percent), voters said that what the country faced since 2008 was an “extraordinary crisis more severe than we’ve seen in decades” as opposed to “a typical recession that the country has every several years.” At the same time, a clear majority, 57 percent, believed that the problems we faced after the crisis were “too severe for anyone to fix in a single term,” while only 4 in 10 voters believed another president would have been able to do more than Mr. Obama to get the economy moving in the past four years.
Blowback
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Again more proof that the electorate is stupid.
Or their values are about getting free stuff.
MobileVideoEngineer on November 8, 2012 at 1:54 PM
And it sure didn’t hurt for bho/team/bhopress to bring up Bush every day 24/7 either for bho’s voters for the mess bho has to fix?
L
letget on November 8, 2012 at 1:55 PM
Um, no he didn’t. Even Democrats were complaining before the election about how he wasn’t offering voters anything more than ‘hey, the other guy sucks’. If you asked an Obama voter today what his agenda is for his next term, I guarantee none would be able to articulate anything beyond generalities.
changer1701 on November 8, 2012 at 1:57 PM
This is a big deal. This clearly points to the idea Romney just did not sell the people on the reality of that liberal policies have been totally ineffective AND that conservative ones would have produced more within those 4 years.
Rocks on November 8, 2012 at 1:57 PM
The Free Shit Army, not values, won the election.
JStew on November 8, 2012 at 1:58 PM
Unfortunately, the people that voted are economically ignorant.
Far from being ‘unprecedented’ this was simply a bad recession. It was made much, much worse by the very fixes Obama put into place.
Between econ not being taught in schools and the media liking to hype stories (worst economy evar!!!!!) we end up in a situation where people think that it’s fine that a man that ran saying “I’ll have this fixed in 3 years or you can fire me” then said, “Oh, I had no idea, but, seriously, this time, if you give me 4 more years, we’ll be good!”
JadeNYU on November 8, 2012 at 1:58 PM
Also, completely abandoning Bush 43and saying nothing when Obama and Biden droned on and on about the “policies that got us in this mess” as if they were conservative policies was just wrong.
Rocks on November 8, 2012 at 1:59 PM
No it clearly points to the idea that the people in this survey are complete morons.
MobileVideoEngineer on November 8, 2012 at 2:00 PM
Not stupid as much as underinformed.
Obama via Clinton articulated why the country was a mess (Bush really screwed up and it was taking longer than expected to fix)in a simple easy to understand idea. Never mind it was false. Romney et al did not attack that idea, did not expose it for a lie. Clinton’s message stuck and so people forgave Obama for not fixing things.
LincolntheHun on November 8, 2012 at 2:00 PM
Ha ha ha, yeah, you think he’s going to come in off the golf course now, and the multi-million dollar vacations and spend the next four years “fixing the economy”?! Ha, ha, ha, hehe! Oh, Gawd, are you people stupid!
Your “values” are killing babies, sodomizing each other, and chooming for recreation. Have a lot of fun the next four years, morons. ha, haha.
SailorMark on November 8, 2012 at 2:01 PM
Values? That’s a hard sell.
Could it be better? Yes. As Patton said, “Lead, Follow, or Get the Hell out of my way”.
The Barky regime has done just about everything it could do to get in the way of a recovery. The fallacy that the federal government is a job creator was at this heart of this.
Barky doesn’t think beyond the moment. Some small bit of his choomed-up mind knows that his policies will end in financial collapse, but by that time he will be a very wealthy man jetting around the world playing even more golf and partying even harder.
NPD. Apres Moi – La Deluge!
CorporatePiggy on November 8, 2012 at 2:01 PM
I don’t listen to but maybe 10 minutes of Rush per day. IF ever at all.
But yesterday I agree with what he said.
A vote for Obama was a vote for Santa Clause.
And pray tell how does one run again Santa?
Doesn’t matter how Santa gets his presents.
These people just want their presents.
Badger40 on November 8, 2012 at 2:02 PM
I think it was lack of values that won the election.
txsurveyor on November 8, 2012 at 2:02 PM
Barack Obama, a man of values.
Kataklysmic on November 8, 2012 at 2:02 PM
Riiiiight..
Let’s see some man-on-the-street interviews with some Obama voters and see how many Obamanites are even able to comprehend that statement let alone agree with it..
HotAirian on November 8, 2012 at 2:04 PM
The values of borrowing money you’ll never repay.
The values of taking things you didn’t earn.
The values of a collective vision over the dreams of the individual.
The values more like Stalin’s Five Year Plan, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, or Pol Pot’s Year Zero, than anything the Founding Fathers had in mind.
/disaster
Paul-Cincy on November 8, 2012 at 2:06 PM
Idiots
A community organizer over a business man with experience
Own this dems
cmsinaz on November 8, 2012 at 2:07 PM
Paul Tsongas, running in 1992 against Clinton:
“I am not Santa Claus”
He helped found the Concord Coalition, to promote fiscal sanity. A Democrat I could and did support.
Paul-Cincy on November 8, 2012 at 2:08 PM
I liked Romney and I think he would have been a great president. He won me over after getting the nomination.
However, on Tuesday we saw that those who feared he would lose because he couldn’t run against Obamacare were right. Romney’s problem was that he didn’t focus on conservative values of small government, individualism, etc and talk about fixing the problems our country faces. I think that Romney is more conservative than he gets credit for, and I hoped that he could show us that in the White House, but people stayed home because there weren’t enough people to fight for him rather than just against Obama.
cpaulus on November 8, 2012 at 2:08 PM
“It’s impossible to beat Santa Claus”
RDH on November 8, 2012 at 2:10 PM
This is all you need to know about why Romney lost
gatorboy on November 8, 2012 at 2:14 PM
I am not interested in all of this post mortem. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my gut tells me there was something very wrong about Tuesday night. 30,000 person crowds for Romney while Obama could barely get 2800 with both Jay Z and Bruce Springsteen. 65% of voters telling exit pollsters that Obama’s response to Sandy factored into their votes.
Something is not adding up.
Kataklysmic on November 8, 2012 at 2:18 PM
Again, the voters are idiots.
MobileVideoEngineer on November 8, 2012 at 2:18 PM
Yep. Lots of yap about investing and investments.
Basically that was just typical liberal handjobbing about how over-taxing 1% of America is supposed to make all the problems go away. Then the job fairies will show up and take care of everyone.
Meanwhile, Romney is still an evil rich bastard from another world no one can relate to.
Moesart on November 8, 2012 at 2:20 PM
I agree. This is what everyone was saying Tuesday night. This election honestly just didn’t make sense. The people are either stupid, or there is some serious fraud. Either way it doesn’t make me feel any better. At least calling people stupid is a way to vent.
MobileVideoEngineer on November 8, 2012 at 2:21 PM
That is truly pathetic. But so many fall for this “Democrats feel my pain” BS even while they’re living under Democrat rule and can’t find a job to put food on the table. And let’s not candy coat it. When these voters say Obama “cares about people like me” more than Romney, they mean he’s willing to give them more handouts. It was a cynical ploy by Obama and the Dems to paint Romney as a heartless rich man who’ll come after their birth control pills and entitlements, but it worked(narrowly).
What’s chilling to me is the thought that a lot of these folks will still be unreachable by the 2016 GOP candidate even if the next 4 years go just as badly.
Doughboy on November 8, 2012 at 2:27 PM
Dude, it’s over. These people will still be verbally fellating Obama and mocking Romney’s “binders full of women” when they’re breaking rocks in a Chinese labor camp.
Kataklysmic on November 8, 2012 at 2:30 PM
Why do people think that elected democrats care about them?
Name one policy that elected democrats have passed that has genuinely helped someone.
tom daschle concerned on November 8, 2012 at 2:34 PM
And I reject the premise that government exists to help people.
tom daschle concerned on November 8, 2012 at 2:35 PM
The “value” of “Free Stuff” over “Freedom” perhaps.
ProfShadow on November 8, 2012 at 3:01 PM
In other words, people still blame Bush.
We are paying the price for his policies. He vastly overestimated the public’s ability to stomach a long period of nation-building in hostile countries.
He turned people away from conservatism by taking its mantle while betraying its principles with increases in entitlement spending of all things, and by not doing enough to avert the financial collapse (yes, I know he tried to reform Fannie and Freddie in 2005, and the Democrats blocked him, but if he’d really wanted to he could have overridden them).
He turned younger voters away with adherence to socially conservative issues at the expense of libertarianism, especially in 2004, when it was became clear that his strategy for re-election was to turn out evangelical voters by putting anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendments on the ballot in crucial swing states.
We have to accept that Bush was a deeply unpopular president, and we need to sever his legacy from the conservative movement, because at the end of the day, he was not a conservative. The best way to do that is to stop defending him. He was a lousy president, he destroyed the Republican party, and the inability of conservatives to reject him has made conservatism unpopular.
Caiwyn on November 8, 2012 at 3:10 PM
Well, if you believe that both parties did a decent job (the Ds slightly better, the Rs slightly worse, than expected) turning out their respective bases and the middle of the electorate sulked at home, what values does that represent?
Seth Halpern on November 8, 2012 at 3:10 PM
Again, they are idiots. Look I know that Bush turned out to not be a true conservative, but if they think this is all still Bush’s fault, there is no excuse for them except that they are stupid.
MobileVideoEngineer on November 8, 2012 at 3:22 PM
That’s right. Romney did a terrible job explaining economic concepts to people in easy to understand ways.
The classic example was the stimulus. All Romney said about the stimulus was “Mr. President, you spent $1 trillion dollars and said that would reduce unemployment to 5.5%. Well, it’s at 8%, so you’re a failure.” Obama’s counter to that was “well, it turned out we were in a much deeper hole than even I anticipated in early 2009, cut me some slack.” The voters accepted Obama’s excuse because Romney never connected the dots.
Another example was the auto bailout. Romney kept sputtering about a “managed bankruptcy,” which was confusing. The legal mechanics of the auto bailout were incredibly complex and hard to break down for folks. Worse, “managed bankruptcy” (which is not “real” bankruptcy jargon, by the way) sounds like a cheesy political euphemism uttered by a guy about to screw you.
What he really needed to say is that Obama nationalized GM, sold Chrysler to the Italians, did a corrupt deal to the unions, and left those auto companies less competitive. But he didn’t, and got demagogued all to hell.
Outlander on November 8, 2012 at 3:41 PM
A reply to this^
hate, denial, hate, denial, hate, denial, hate…. You guys should keep it up until 2016 and beyond. The only place you’ll ever think of governing is HA…assuming AP doesn’t turn from purple to Blue himself (HAHA)
Anyway… Keep calling almost half of the electorate stupid, moochers, or keep trying to DE-franchise them by claiming fraud everytime they vote differently than your. Julian Castro will be POTUS before you know it (revenge …remember?)
I voted for Ryan…so Romney got my vote by default. But for the love of God, we live in a country that is changing…are all of you that old and afraid of change? Latinos don’t bite. And like our genius Karl said… most of them are conservatives on social issues, as long as you don’t treat them like aliens who need to self deport. It’s not their fault that you have no way of stopping from entering and no way of tracking them once they get here.
Just checking….this is a democratic country…right?
Can.I.be.in.the.middle on November 8, 2012 at 3:52 PM
I’m an avid reader of HotAir and its community comments, but I also read Libertarian sites and Liberal sites so as to see what their community comments have to say.
I feel that this is the only way that anyone can truly understand the issues and how they are seen and defined by others in order to avoid living in a bubble.
Because of my reading information outside of the bubble I have been shocked for quite some time at how out of touch many here at HotAir, Redstate, etc, have become.
Every time someone tried to explain whats going on outside of the HotAir bubble they would be attacked.
This is why so many here were surprised with the election results despite that it was clearly shown by the overwhelming majority of polls
It was so obvious to a lot of dems I know that they didn’t vote because they knew Obama was going to win hands down therefore they didn’t need to vote.
My suggestion is to start including information that is outside of your bubble so that you can be apart of or at least understand what the majority of the country is thinking/wanting.
Calling the majority of people in the county stupid or morons and lazy free loaders is not going to help you gain support from the rest of the country.
JustTheFacts on November 8, 2012 at 3:59 PM
Wrong. America is a Republic.
SailorMark on November 8, 2012 at 4:02 PM
Vision or Slogan?
Fleuries on November 8, 2012 at 4:04 PM
Uh huh.
Kataklysmic on November 8, 2012 at 4:09 PM
O
M
G
I swear, after reading your comment, the only thing I could hear was:
“Aaaatttt laaaassssttttt, my love has come along”
LOL. Anyway, thank you very much for letting me know I’m not alone. I approach things the same way you do! I blog of HP, HA, RS, CNN, Politico, etc… They nuked me hear just for even mentioning that AP and EM were doing them a disservice by not talking the overwhelming # of polls that came out in the last week. It wasn’t Sandy or Christie. It was math.
Can.I.be.in.the.middle on November 8, 2012 at 4:14 PM
here*
Can.I.be.in.the.middle on November 8, 2012 at 4:18 PM
It wasn’t demographics that decided the election, you damn racists.
Now STFU and keep doing what you were.
Xavier on November 8, 2012 at 5:13 PM