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.

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. . .

I’m not the GOP . I’m one voice crying in the wilderness. I will gird my loins for the next 4 years of destruction and I will adjust to the fact the only man in America with the desire and skills to save us from what’s coming won’t get that chance. The rest of you can cling to the fantasy that a woman of mediocre education and intelligence is going to save us.

Basilsbest on November 12, 2012 at 10:12 PM

Reagan’s education was mediocre, and he was no intellectual. Funny how he managed to succeed.

Also, notice how the “Mormon faithful” have deserted HotAir?

Fair weather conservatives…don’t win elections.

right2bright on November 13, 2012 at 3:22 PM

You should have been in the David Frum thread last night.

It was real Ugly. I had to put the smack down on a Romney worshiper.

portlandon on November 13, 2012 at 3:29 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.”

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

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 steal cinch 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?

In the end, Romney could not convince those same voters to go out and vote.

Pork-Chop on November 13, 2012 at 3:08 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?

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

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:

All of the landslide majority did not vote against the conservative philosophy; they voted against a false image our Liberal opponents successfully mounted. Indeed it was a double false image. Not only did they portray us as advancing a kind of radical departure from the status quo, but they took for themselves a costume of comfortable conservatism. Read again their campaign fiction and you will find their normal flamboyant Liberalism hidden under the protective coloration of “the great society,” or as Hubert Horatio Humphrey (who can’t ask what time it is without conducting a filibuster) put it: “We don’t want a planned society — we want society planning.”

This is what the Dems have done for years in one way or another.

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?