Why did Romney get fewer votes in Ohio than McCain?
There are several theories about those missing white voters, but the most plausible is that the ones who were undecideds or weak Republicans were deeply influenced by Obama’s relentless attacks on Romney in May, June, July and August. A steady stream of negative ads portrayed Romney as a heartless, out-of-touch rich guy, and Romney didn’t really fight back. The missing white voters didn’t like Obama but were also turned off by the Republican, so they stayed home. That’s the theory, at least; Republicans will know more when they actually interview lots of those nonvoters.
“Obama won Ohio because he did what Bush did in 2004 — surprised pundits by increasing turnout in his base,” says Mark Weaver, a veteran Ohio Republican strategist. “Also, by demonizing the undefined Romney, he tamped down Romney’s ability to motivate weak Republicans to turn out.”
What does all this have to do with a conservative cocoon? Not much. The missing voters certainly weren’t in the cocoon, and there’s no evidence the Romney campaign ignored those voters because conservative media told them the election was already in the bag. Just the opposite; Romney chased them hard.
Blowback
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I think the “average” did not like the bailouts, but the “average” in California doesn’t matter, or in Texas, those states were settled…but the union worker in Ohio, PA, Wi, Mi, did not have a problem…
right2bright on November 13, 2012 at 3:42 PM
Thanks for the clarification…
right2bright on November 13, 2012 at 3:44 PM
Anyone screaming voter fraud is a sore loser (with emphasis on “loser”), period. Your guy was a failure. He was soundly rejected by the voters. Admit it and move on with your lives.
Armin Tamzarian on November 13, 2012 at 3:44 PM
You dont know for sure if Romney would have failed, but I know for damn sure Obama has succeeded in getting his polices enacted and now he has more time. Which is precisely what we couldn’t afford. We dont know what the electorate will look like in 2016. For all we know the Obama cult of personality wont translate to the next Dem,but we still have lost valuable time.
ChunkyLover on November 13, 2012 at 3:49 PM
and not one of those people would have voted for bush in 2008. People don’t like Bailouts but if others are getting them They damn sure want their cut. Mitt wanted to bail out the banks (i.e Wall street) but he didn’t want to bail out the avg worker. Those types of actions play large in places like OH and western PA. when the chips were on the table Mitt came down on the wall street/bank side and told theworkers to go screw themselves. I think if he would have been against both or for both it wouldn’t have mattered at all. People see when you play favorites and Mitt played favorites with the big banks and wall street. It’s time the GOPe stop thinking of their base as stupid ignorant people who will fall in line and vote the nominee no matter what liberal they put up.
unseen on November 13, 2012 at 3:52 PM
Hank Williams Jr. “Country Boys Can Survive”.
They know they can make it with either branch of the Two Party Evil Money Cult in power in D.C.. So they stayed home and saved up a few coins for ammo and a new gun or two.
Votes not worth much when the choice is just a commie know nothing or a RINO ready to put on Pampers and Pander.
So they said why bother.
APACHEWHOKNOWS on November 13, 2012 at 3:57 PM
there lies your false premise. Some people voted for Obama again, specifically for the fact that they couldn’t tell them apart. Don’t believe me? Go look at last 2 debates, and this time listen like the elections were in the past (lol)…no daylight…
Can.I.be.in.the.middle on November 13, 2012 at 3:57 PM
So basically Obama lied his ass off for 3 months and the white voters bought it.
jawkneemusic on November 13, 2012 at 3:58 PM
I do know Mitt would have failed. Liveralism fails eveerytime its tried. Mitt wouldn’t have been the first to make liberalism work. He would have failed just like Bush failed and just like Bush the 1st failed.
the founders and the voters in 2012 gave the country a very clear cut answer to stop people like Obama. It’s called gridlock. The SPeaker of the House as being the lone roadblock to Obama needs to step up grab his balls and use the power the founders gave him to stop Obama from fundementally changing the country. Work with him when it is in the common good. Block him when it is in the common good. Gridlock is the answer to an out of control federal government. Gridlock is what the founders wanted when they set up our government. Making it very hard to fundementally change the country. IT is now up to the GOP to stop in the middle of the raod yell stop and rally their voters almost 60million of them to stand with them.
Obama won nothing no mandate, he ran on no second term agenda. The people voted Obama in because Mitt in their eyes was worse. The problem running as the lesser of two evils is that at the end of the day you never know who the voters will see as the greater evil.
unseen on November 13, 2012 at 3:58 PM
You make one of my three points.
First, as a threshold matter, all Republican pols–not just Romney–have never pushed back on the financial crisis meme. And, as a result, the GOP will be blamed for it for a generation. The Bush tax cuts didn’t cause the crisis. Heck, in 2007, the feds got more revenue than they ever did. The GOP never explained that you can’t look back, apply a higher tax rate to ordinary income and capital gains, and claim “Look at all that lost revenue.” That’s horseshite. The feds would not have received that much revenue–especially the capital gains–because people change their behavior. Say thing happened in the 1990s. We didn’t get oodles of tax revenue from the 39.6% bracket. Revenue gushed forth after Congress knocked the capital gains tax rate from 28% to 20%.
Second, Romney never defended his NYT editorial. To begin with, authors don’t have choice over their titles. The damned NYT copy editors or editors torpedoed him there. Why he submitted it to them is beyond me. But then Romney never explained what a rip off the bailout was for some people. He needed to explain how the UAW got elevated over honest people. Sure, he’d have lost those UAW families anyway, but some of the regular joes looking at Obama claims that he saved the auto industry would have said, “BS, at who’s expense?”
Third, I think Romney’s 47% crack came back to haunt him. There’s a percentage–25%–who just aren’t going to find that argument appealing. But lumping in such a large group, I think they just decided to say, “Phuck you.”
Again, I suppose Romney was the best of a weak field, but he should be financing campaigns rather than running them. Maybe he could use that dough to start a conservative network that deals in serious issues rather than as a sounding board for morons like Hannity. A network where you could watch some interesting policy types discuss problems and solutions.
BuckeyeSam on November 13, 2012 at 3:58 PM
Obama is a liar. You support liars and thieves. Own it!
jawkneemusic on November 13, 2012 at 4:00 PM
They were thrown out onto the streets and replaced by thousands of fake voters.
JellyToast on November 13, 2012 at 4:01 PM
oh there was plenty of fraud to go around dems love fraud. but Mitt failed to win by the amount needed to overcome the fraud which all GOPers have to do. 2014 can’t come soon enough.
unseen on November 13, 2012 at 4:02 PM
Republicans consistantly overestimate the voter. The Republican showed ads that appealed to people’s common sense, logic and rationality. Little Powerpoint presentations of information so the voter could ‘connect the dots’.
The Democrats put out ads that were vicous lies, out of contex quotes, with short scenes of high visual impact messages and repeatable ‘sound bites’. Even when the MSN pointed out the most egregious falsehoods, they continued to run these clips.
American voters, with attention spans measured in nanoseconds, would only remember the negative images and the nasty sound bites.
Uniblogger on November 13, 2012 at 4:04 PM
Why do we listen to Rino’s, using their reasoning (need to move to the middle), Obama WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN ELECTED. He’s a flaming hardcore leftist. Yet he won. Why, because he won is base, blacks/hispanics & single woman.These groups felt motivated. Dirty little secret is you start with a motivated base and work out from their.
That’s why Palin was such an interesting possible candidate (If those establishment crud gave her a chance, but no, they greased the skids for romney, can’t let Palin upset the plan of the establishment).
Palin has a strong grassroots base built with NO MONEY! She could have gotten people to walk on glass for her like obama does.
Again, I say, screw the friggen rinos, they have given me obama for 8 years. But then again most of the Beltway swill rinos voted for obama anyways!
Danielvito on November 13, 2012 at 4:06 PM
Romney never confronted nor challenged the outright lies of the Obysmal campaign with hard-hitting facts. Romney never had his hair on fire. The Romney campaign refused to allow Ryan to go into urban areas nor the places to educate the youth vote about why fiscal conservatism was in their best interests.
Then there was the Obymal cheat machine, ready to conjure votes and voters out of thin air.
onlineanalyst on November 13, 2012 at 4:10 PM
Guys, chill. the Democrats didn’t do anything we couldn’t have done. We need to understand why we didn’t do the things that gave them an edge in a close election, and then fix it. Next time let’s not play so much catch-up.
alwaysfiredup on November 13, 2012 at 4:12 PM
Why didn’t Obysmal’s interview on Univision hurt him? Why didn’t Univision’s expose on Fast and Furious hurt him?
Ultimately Obysmal’s message of envy, the desire for “revenge” resonated with the uninformed.
onlineanalyst on November 13, 2012 at 4:13 PM
I cannot remember where I read it, but some paid opinionater made the point that it wasn’t voter stupidity, but voter suspicion of Romney.
Do you really think that people who didn’t buy into Obama’s shell game in 2008 would have changed their mind in four years?
INC on November 13, 2012 at 4:19 PM
Romney didn’t fight in the arena of ideas. That’s what happened. That’s where conservatives win.
The Left has nothing but personal attacks and demagoguery. When they present their ideas, they cloak them with language of the right.
Ronald Reagan: On Losing
He wrote this after the 1964 election:
This is what the Dems have done for years in one way or another.
INC on November 13, 2012 at 4:26 PM
I agree with you. I don’t believe anything news source put out, yes, even the vote counts.
Are we really sure there were GOP observers around when votes being counted?
Sir Napsalot on November 13, 2012 at 4:29 PM
Romney defined himself in the PRIMARIES as a candidate that would relentlessly attack CONSERVATIVES.
In the end, Romney could not convince those same voters to go out and vote.
Freddy on November 13, 2012 at 4:52 PM
Simple test for voter fraud: Was a Democrat running? Did he want to win?
There is voter fraud in every single presidential election. This was an extremely tight race to the end, and one of the candidates was linked to an organization caught multiple times in voter fraud, running in a party known for voter fraud, and was known to have gamed the caucus system in his own party to
stealcinch his nomination. It would be unprecedented if the election was clean.So now that we’ve disposed of the ridiculous myth that there was NO voter fraud, we can ask the real question. How much fraud was there? Was it enough to steal the election? And if so, can it ever be proven?
tom on November 13, 2012 at 5:12 PM
Why am I not surprised it was the guy who kept saying that “Romney is the most qualified candidate we’ve had in over 200 years.”
I believe I pointed out a couple of times that Romney was more like, “the most qualified candidate we’ve had in over 4 years.”
tom on November 13, 2012 at 5:30 PM
Wow! Meltdown is the word. I’ve always caught a hint of Mitt-worship from this commenter, but this takes the cake.
Reagan’s education was mediocre, and he was no intellectual. Funny how he managed to succeed.
tom on November 13, 2012 at 5:44 PM
Forget Project ORCA. Romney’s entire ground game in Ohio was terrible, and was since the primaries when Rick Santorum came within a hair’s width of beating him in Ohio despite having a shoestring budget. Romney’s guys made no attempt to coordinate efforts with local folks on the ground, listen to their concerns, or even competent organize them. Instead, everything was run out of a cocoon in Boston or Columbus (Ohio’s state capitol) and nobody communicated, volunteers were alienated, and so forth.
And in a retail politics state like Ohio, that can make the difference. Hell, we had first-time Republican local judicial candidates beat Romney’s vote totals in Cuyahoga County alone. . .
Outlander on November 13, 2012 at 5:57 PM
Obviously cause Palin was on the ticket last time. Palin is the only hope.
Mormontheman on November 13, 2012 at 6:15 PM
Also, Byron York is wrong about Obama turning out 200,000 more black voters in 2012 than 2008.
If you believe the exit polls, about 660,000 blacks voted in 2008 (11% of 6 million votes). If 200,000 more black people voted in Ohio in 2012 than in 2008, you’d be talking about a 30% increase in black voter turnout. That’s staggering, considering that according to 2011 Census estimates, there are only 1,116,000 black voting-age people in the whole state.
The turnout numbers on the ground don’t bear this out, either. Ohio’s black population is highly concentrated in a few counties, the biggest being Cuyahoga County (where Cleveland is). 26.6% of Ohio’s black population lives there. If black turnout increased over 30% from 2008, you’d expect to see Cuyahoga’s turnout numbers move up, yes?
And yet, Cuyahoga’s 2012 turnout (617,141 voters) is 8.3% less than its 2008 turnout (672,750 voters)–a turnout reduction greater than the state as a whole (5.9%) (5,431,309 in 2012 vs. 5,773,777 in 2008).
Not buying it. White people stayed home and that’s all there is to it.
Outlander on November 13, 2012 at 6:24 PM
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