Weekly Standard
Even a five-point swing wouldn’t have saved Romney
In fact, if Mitt Romney had managed to swing the margin by 5 points in his direction in each and every state, he still would have lost (272 electoral votes to 266).
Nor was this because President Obama turned out massive numbers of voters to pull the level for him. Per capita, Obama actually got 9 percent fewer votes than in 2008 — a rather precipitous decline. If Romney had simply improved upon John McCain’s performance by that same amount — if he had gotten 9 percent more votes per capita than McCain did — he’d now be preparing to move into the White House. Instead, Romney got 2 percent fewer votes per capita than McCain, a result so bad that it would have seemed almost unfathomable before Election Day.
Blowback
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He did it on purpose.
astonerii on December 28, 2012 at 4:49 PM
Who gives a shite? It’s over. We lost. We know it. I’m sick of these articles that say the same thing over and over again.
Blake on December 28, 2012 at 5:01 PM
Because whoever wins the narrative over why Romney lost the election will have an outsized influence in determining the GOP’s future.
Right now the narrative is that Romney lost because he was too conservative and too extreme, and we must all get on board with the Obama agenda (especially with regards to taxes, health care, and amnesty) or the party will never win another election.
Doomberg on December 28, 2012 at 5:09 PM
I’m waiting for the “Romney is the most electable and our only hope” crowd to come in and repute this article.
Bottom line is a candidate who “fails to inspire.” This is hugely important. It’s the old Dole/McCain/Bush 41 thing again: Without energizing one’s base, it doesn’t matter if you can get a few extra percentage points from “swing” voters (even assuming it’s true that those extra few points are achievable — which is probably not true anyway, because if you aren’t inspirational, you aren’t inspirational, period, meaning you don’t inspire the middle either
Romney was a disaster because he was not inspirational and he had NO core principals.
Raquel Pinkbullet on December 28, 2012 at 5:16 PM
Expect to LOSE again in 2016, if you don’t heed the lessons from this election.
Raquel Pinkbullet on December 28, 2012 at 5:17 PM
There are different figures in this other article which disagree with this weekly standard article.
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/12/03/romney-beats-mccain
click on National vote tracker
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AjYj9mXElO_QdHpla01oWE1jOFZRbnhJZkZpVFNKeVE&f=true&noheader=false&gid=19
This article says Romney got 49.13% in Florida to Obama’s 50.01% it was by a hair.
Take a look at how close the swing states were in the chart.
Media reports close to the election mis stated the closeness of the actual vote after banked absentee votes and military ballots were counted.
Stranger statistic to me would be that in Missouri and in Indiana, Romney won in each state with about 55-68% of the vote, but the republican candidate lost the senate. Please explain this reddish state behavior, I can’t figure it.
Fleuries on December 28, 2012 at 5:20 PM
Romney under performed McCain in Miami-Dade county by a considerable margin, enough to flip the state.
Romney under performed McCain per capita. That was the point of the article.
In Indiana we lost because Richard Murdock made that serious gaffe about rape.
And n Missouri Akin was a disaster. Enough said.
Raquel Pinkbullet on December 28, 2012 at 5:32 PM
Romney lost the un-losable election that Ron Paul would have won. Ron Paul would have rallied the nation behind freedom, liberty and prosperity—the enemies of our corrupt, profligate, immoral ruling class that the two parties represent.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 5:37 PM
Absolutely right. Romney was uninspiring and, thus, millions of potential supporters stayed home on election night. Meanwhile, Obama motivated his “47% base” to record turnout by telling them that Romney would take their government cheese away.
Had just 300,000 more Romney supporters in Ohio and Florida arrived at the polls, you would have been 2/3 of the way to winning the national election. That’s how close this race was.
Outlander on December 28, 2012 at 5:48 PM
Yes. Nominate a conservative.
If I want inspiration I’ll hire a life coach. If I want competency and good management I’ll hire an intelligent, fiscal conservative.
Perhaps it’s over when people need to be “inspired” to do the right and sane thing.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 5:51 PM
What’s that old saying? “He who forgets to get the voters out, loses election.”
albill on December 28, 2012 at 5:56 PM
Heed your own effin lesson. I don’t need to read the same crap over and over again.
Blake on December 28, 2012 at 6:03 PM
What you obviously see as the right and sane thing to do, others needed to be shown it to be so.
You were an easy sell, great for you. Not everyone else is willing to vote for a guy who created the framework for Obamacare. A guy a argued for the auto bailouts, then argued against them when done, and later argued he was the reason the auto bailouts were ever enacted when they seemed a success.
In short, conservatives, for which you are likely not even remotely at heart one of, like Romney, do not find it easy to support slimy low life scum bag progressive wrapped up in their mantle, no matter how nice his life appears from the outside. When a man says his views are progressive and proves it with the laws he enacts and the actions he takes as governor, we tend to believe him to be progressive.
astonerii on December 28, 2012 at 6:05 PM
Anyone that stayed home should be ashamed of themselves. Pathetic GOP voters.
We couldn’t have more of a choice in this election. The debates made it very clear. The election made it very clear. The respective personal histories of each candidate made it ABUNDANTLY clear.
Any “Republicans” or “conservatives” that sat this election out should be ASHAMED of themselves. Bunch of selfish, greedy, short sighted, moronic fools. There was a lot more at stake than your own personal sensibilities.
*spits*
blatantblue on December 28, 2012 at 6:12 PM
I see you want to have this argument again. The alternative was/is Obama.
Did I want Romney? No.
Did I want other people, anyone before the primary was over? Yes.
I know it baffles you and a few others that I can be both a conservative (and likely more conservative than you) and yet still play the long game.
Did I ever say it was going to be easy? NO. If you were paying the least amount of attention to what I was saying after the primaries was that it was PAINFUL to have to advocate for Romney. I knew and still do that at best he was a RINO. That voting for him is voting for the status quo and some of the same old garbage.
However, and no one that has any little bit of sanity left in them will disagree, ROMNEY WILL ALWAYS BE A BETTER CHOICE THAN OBAMA.
You can insult me, call me a progressive, question my conservatism, but really is the above too hard for you to understand?
It seems so as you keep on willfully misrepresenting my position(s) in order to… I’m not really sure. Make yourself feel better? Scapegoat someone or some idea because everything is going in the cr*pper and instead of looking around you it’s easier to blame someone on the internet?
I hope that provided some clarity for you. Please do try not to misrepresent me in the future. Thanks.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 6:25 PM
LOL! The wind blew it back in your face!
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:25 PM
Romney could STILL win!!! He’s the only one! Olympics! Bigot! Moron! RINO!!! ACK PHTTTT!!
29Victor on December 28, 2012 at 6:26 PM
Yeah sure, you keep saying that but you’ve been one of his online enforcers here, as demonstrated in the thread yesterday. You seem alright but you sold your vote like a cheep political floozy. I have a lot more respect for Honda.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:27 PM
Oh, doode! It’s all over your shirt and shoes and dribbling down your chin! GROSS!
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:29 PM
The people who stayed home are not the type who come here and likely don’t primarily think of themselves as political at all, much less Republican or conservative. The GOP has got to start engaging with low information voters. Romney made it too intellectual and insufficiently visceral.
alwaysfiredup on December 28, 2012 at 6:30 PM
Please seek help for your obsessions, lies and mental issues.
PS: Nice to know you respect Obama voters. Do get that looked into.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 6:31 PM
If Honda voted for Obama it was to save the conservative movement, if not the Republican Party, from people like Romney, Obama’s ideological cousin. It was a strategic vote. A lot of other Republicans and conservative/libertarian independents voted 3rd party or say home. Some of them low-info voters and some of them disappointed high-info voters like me and Honda. If you are going to smear good conservatives like Honda go do it at the Huffington Post where they appreciate that sort of thing.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:35 PM
say = stayed
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:36 PM
Regarding your accusation that I have an obsession, I remind you and others that it was you and others who have been obsessed with hounding Honda from thread to thread, day after day.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:38 PM
Anyone willing to sit home and let Obama win again doesn’t have a problem with what he’s doing, no matter what they tell you. It’s just that simple.
No he wouldn’t. Unless I’m missing something, with a 5 point swing in every state, he would have carried Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Colorado. That would have given him 69 more electoral votes for a total of 275, making him the next President of the United States.
xblade on December 28, 2012 at 6:41 PM
Look, I can respect what you are saying somewhat. How come you are not giving me the benefit of the doubt that my vote was strategic as well? I have said many times that there were two ways to handle this – to either vote for Romney and work within the system to change things, that it would take at least three or four cycles to get all the morons out of office.
OR for Obama to win, which would cause a lot more problems, be harder to change the system, more people would suffer and socialism would get its foot in the door.
Now which seems saner in the long run? Now we’re going to be fighting off gun grabbing, socialism, issues in the ME, etc, etc, etc, etc and still try to get sane people in office. Hard, hard ride ahead.
Honda’s an idiot. A lot of good people are going to suffer when really it could have been avoided. Why should I celebrate that? Why should you? Honda is not a good conservative. A good conservative would have seen the perils of a second Obama term and done everything in their power to avoid it, not run headfirst towards it.
Sorry you can’t see that.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 6:44 PM
So all the small-gov conservative and libertarian types who didn’t vote for Obama’s ideological cousin, the right-wing corporate statist Mitt Romney, is secretly a Marxist?
You sound like some sort of neo-bircher conspiracy nut.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 6:45 PM
When I come across Honda in a thread I remind other posters that this is an Obama voter. I do not go looking for Honda and it’s not a daily occurrence. If you can show that I go to multiple threads daily, do so. Otherwise, I am calling BS on you.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 6:45 PM
You are dealing with a Ronulan..Consider that..
Dire Straits on December 28, 2012 at 6:49 PM
Instead, Romney got 2 percent fewer votes per capita than McCain, a result so bad that it would have seemed almost unfathomable before Election Day.
That is bad. Plus McCain had to battle Bush fatigue and a housing collapse. Romney had a playing field sloped in his direction, coukd have run on Obamas record and still did worse the McCain.
SparkPlug on December 28, 2012 at 6:50 PM
Per capita numbers are pretty useless because kids and aliens (which are included in the population numbers) don’t vote.
Romney received about a million more votes in 2012 than McCain did in 2008
2008: Voting Age population: 230,872,030
Voting Eligible population: 213,313,508
Turnout casting votes for President: 131,304,731
Total Turnout: 132,653,958 (1,349,227 voters did not cast a ballot for office of President)
2012: VAP: 240,926,957
VEP: 219,296,589
Highest Office: 128,656,686
Romney gets 27.75% of votes from the total VEP in 2012
McCain gets 28.10% of votes from the total VEP in 2008
For a drop of 0.35%, not a 2% drop. I don’t know yet how many voters did not cast a vote for President but I do know that about 2 million people cast votes for neither of the top two candidates.
Looking at votes cast for highest office:
2004: Obama 52.9% McCain 45.7 62.2% of VEP casting ballots.
2012: Obama 51.0% Romney 47.3 58.7% of VEP casting ballots.
So while the VEP went up by about 6 million people, the number of votes cast for President went down about 4 million. Romney lost Florida by less than 1 point or -74309 votes. A 5 point swing would have won Romney Ohio which Obama carried by less than the national margin (50.67 to 47.69) it would also have won Romney Virginia. It would have been close in PA where Obama won by 5.3
I think a 5 point swing would have done it. Romney won a larger share of those casting ballots for President than McCain did but the real problem the Republicans had in this election were:
1. Running a campaign based purely on economics. Most people do not understand economics. Many people’s choices were between a Republican candidate whose policies MIGHT help them get/keep a job and a Democrat candidate who might cost them their job but will likely send them a check in the mail so everything will be OK. And what happens if that Republican’s job growth scenario somehow misses them and they don’t get a job in their city? At least with the Democrat they will get a check in the mail.
2. Ignoring minority and poor voters. While Romney was absolutely correct when he stated in that meeting that 47% of the people who do not pay taxes are not going to respond to a campaign based on lower taxes, it was not communicated directly to those people how those lower taxes will benefit them. The notion that “we don’t want to ‘cut off’ your benefits, we want to make it so your kids won’t NEED them” was not communicated AT ALL. The urban poor areas were completely ignored by the campaign.
crosspatch on December 28, 2012 at 6:51 PM
Isn’t it more of a “Johnson” (sorry just couldn’t resist!).
Really, I’d rather not see Honda and sometimes when I do I say nothing because it’s hours later and what’s the point.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 6:53 PM
While Ronald Reagan certainly had economics as ONE facet of his campaign, he also had a broader message of bringing America back again. It was that broader vision that was lacking in this campaign from both the official campaign rhetoric and the super PAC rhetoric.
crosspatch on December 28, 2012 at 6:53 PM
Very nice post..very nice..
Dire Straits on December 28, 2012 at 6:55 PM
The problem with the GOP is that anyone could have found that outcome “unfathomable”.
ddrintn on December 28, 2012 at 7:00 PM
So in other words what you’re saying is that you’ve made up your mind and anybody who came to a different conclusions is an idiot who needs to be hounded from thread to thread with emotional, off-topic smears and attacks.
Except in this case Honda is somebody who has been here many years and was very popular during the tea party days, making many excellent contributions to that winning effort—and you were not here, or at least didn’t make any notable contribution. You only became more prominent here after Romney won the nomination, a losing effort.
Honda has earned far more respect, IMO, than you have, but you are not without hope if you stop acting like Romney’s online enforcer.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 7:03 PM
McCain had online enforcers too, remember Wise_Man? I think he was eventually banned after McCain lost the election and Wise_Man wouldn’t stop policing people’s opinions here.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 7:06 PM
You know what? Shut up with your whining. Romney was a poor candidate and you know it.
Here’s a quarter. Call somebody who cares.
SagebrushPuppet on December 28, 2012 at 7:18 PM
SIGH.
One more time for the cheap seats:
- Romney is no longer around. There’s nothing to enforce.
- Posting that Honda is an Obama voter is doing nothing but stating a fact. There’s no emotion.
- Prove that I’ve been “hounding from thread to thread… smears and attacks”. Go ahead. I double dog dare you. PROVE IT.
Yer so full of it. I call BS on you.
kim roy on December 28, 2012 at 7:20 PM
Between pouty socons, ignorant tea party types, Catholics without a clue, Jews from another planet, it’s amazing Romney got as close as he did.
Moesart on December 28, 2012 at 7:23 PM
What does FOAD stand for?
sharrukin on December 28, 2012 at 7:24 PM
Excellent analysis
Romney made up ground with Tea Party by selecting Ryan, and the aced the Medicare crowd. They missed the ones who were on the edge of the cliff, and who could not see how lowering taxes on interest would keep them from going over the edge. Ron Paul helped put Romney in, because he hated the other more, but his tactics did not build public trust in the general GOP message
entagor on December 28, 2012 at 7:30 PM
If I was wrong then I retract that part, but that is what DanMan was doing yesterday for no justified reason and you not only chose to defend DanMan but took many uncalled for swipes at Honda yourself. You seem alright otherwise so please use better judgment in the future, as I suspect you will, and all will be well.
FloatingRock on December 28, 2012 at 7:33 PM
F^ck off and Die.
astonerii on December 28, 2012 at 7:40 PM
I posted too soon. I also agree with the numbers in crosspatch on December 28, 2012 at 6:51 PM
It was a close election, not a rout
Conservatives did not lose the country. They lost one constituency who also would not vote Obama. The same group wants America back too, but they have given up on the crowd making the promises.
The election is being misconstrued on purpose, to shut down conservatives. However, purging the conservative wing will work against re uniting the voters on the GOP side. Thus the MSM is also working to present the election as a stunning defeat, when it was very close
Until the GOP gets past annointed candidates, and election strategies that try to blackmail the little people into voting for their guy because the other guy is worse, the GOP will remain a weak party with strong possibilities. Takes a Will Rogers, not a Wonk to build the bridges needed
entagor on December 28, 2012 at 7:40 PM
Sounds unemotional.
sharrukin on December 28, 2012 at 7:43 PM
Ladies and gentlemen: the petty, mulish spitefulness and swollen sense of entitlement of the typical Team Mittens sycophant, in perfect and appalling miniature.
Hillary is already working on her acceptance speech for November, 2016.
Kent18 on December 28, 2012 at 7:43 PM
Bingo.
Romney was no more credible about his progressive background than Obama. The only difference was that Romney was a Republican which meant there were people in the GOP who presumably wouldn’t let him get away with some things.
sharrukin on December 28, 2012 at 7:46 PM
I did not mis represent you at all. You were an easy sell out to Romney and his progressive self. Way too many people are like you. It allowed Romney to continue to run a pathetic campaign that was destined to lose. Romney should have first and foremost have been pushed out of the race in Florida, but people like you chose him. Then once he got the nomination secured, instead of steering him to right, where he could have been a contrast to Obama, your allies worked over time to tell the base to shut the f^ck up and get the hell in line making Romney a compliment to Obama. If any one thing led to his demise it was the sycophantic nut balls who kept him from facing reality, that no one was able to sell him the way he is. Now that it is over instead of shut the f^ck up and get the hell in line, it is f^ck off and die! You were your own worst enemy, unless of course you were an Obama supporter in disguise. In reality, I doubt that is who you are, I really think you just are the f^cking stupid that you thought you were a benefit.
astonerii on December 28, 2012 at 7:49 PM
You are a kook but you know that..
Dire Straits on December 28, 2012 at 8:06 PM
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