What if Obama’s campaign didn’t win him the election?
As I understand the “formidable campaign” narrative, it’s that Obama campaign simply did a lot of things much better than the Romney campaign. If so, then one possible implication is this:
Obama should have done better where the two campaigns went head-to-head, relative to places where neither side was campaigning. That is, even though Obama was expected to lose votes in most states relative to a more favorable year like 2008, he should have done better in the battleground states, relative to non-battleground states, because the battleground states were where his campaign’s hypothesized prowess—in fundraising, messaging, GOTV, etc.—was manifest. So did that happen? …
If the Obama campaign really beat Romney that badly, you’d expect the battleground states to be “higher” on the vertical axis than the other states. That is, you’d expect them to stand out as states where Obama did better relative to 2008. But that’s not really true. He lost 2.05 points in the battleground states relative to 2008 and 2.24 points in the other states—a difference of less than two-tenths of one percentage point (0.19). A simple regression model confirms that, once you’ve taken Obama’s 2008 margin into account, his 2012 margin was no better or worse in the battleground states compared to the other states.
Blowback
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Yep, and he proves it with math.
Unfortunately, the implications for that aren’t good. The public needs to understand the ramifications of voting for their guy. It’s going to take more moments like this past payday.
HitNRun on January 9, 2013 at 7:41 AM
Navel-gazing… the fruit loops still elected Ø despite a vigorous Republican effort, meaning votes are for sale. Get past that and analysis might mean something.
ExpressoBold on January 9, 2013 at 8:11 AM
Crony capitalism and vested interests win the day. This is why everyone should pay taxes, everyone, when you have skin in the game (see unions) you show up to vote.
Fallon on January 9, 2013 at 8:18 AM
You mean what if all that lying, cheating, and help they got from the media didn’t work?
radjah shelduck on January 9, 2013 at 8:21 AM
I would still have a modicum of faith in the American people.
Kataklysmic on January 9, 2013 at 8:23 AM
It was GOTV that won 2012 for 0bama. The coming four years hopefully will convince the mal-informed as to why they stayed home before now.
Sekhmet on January 9, 2013 at 8:31 AM
He won because of the color of his skin. Why is everyone tiptoeing around the elephant in the room?
ButterflyDragon on January 9, 2013 at 8:35 AM
Big Bird.
forest on January 9, 2013 at 8:41 AM
He won simply because MOST of America say a caraciture of both candidates.
There is a reason why EVERY single Statist regime in the past took control over the media. China, Iran, Nazis, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, USSR, Progressives, and on and on.
You don’t need to fool all the people all the time. Here in America you just need to fool a small percentage in election years (swing voters). The core Democrats want lies and abuses of power and corruption from their leaders because they are on the receiving end of that corruption! Their is always a privledged group under statism and Democrats want that and want it to be them.
The media is the core of our problem though because MOST Americans do not see the corruption and scandals and insanity and violence from the democrats.
Side by side we still win. Caraciture by caricature we lose.
Organize and fight the media or we get destroyed.
GardenGnome on January 9, 2013 at 8:52 AM
The campaign didn’t have to. The media was ready to carry his water every step of the way.
hawkdriver on January 9, 2013 at 9:38 AM
Considering that Obama got 4 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008, yet Romney only got 1 million more than McCain, it’s pretty clear what happened:
Obama didn’t win.
Romney lost.
It’s not really that complicated.
Nonetheless, considering that 3 million people stayed home this time around and obviously weren’t disgusted enough by O’s first term to vote against him, pessimism over the result is still warranted.
I still don’t understand it.
jr.ewing.78 on January 9, 2013 at 10:15 AM
Romney threw the election, much like McCain did.
astonerii on January 9, 2013 at 10:18 AM
There was nothing, I repeat, NOTHING special about the way the Obama campaign was run. All he did was go full negative and blame everything on everyone else but him. Blaming somebody else only goes so far in a society that doesn’t reward infantilistic-dependent tendencies. Unfortunately for us, the Democrats have shaped this country, and a huge swath of the voting bloc, into an infantilistic-dependent culture, so blaming somebody else for your own woes is a more than effective campaigning strategy.
mintycrys on January 9, 2013 at 1:03 PM