Flip side: didn't Romney come awful close to winning?

Two party elections are always Us Vs. Them. Disparate groups of people have to coalesce into just a binary choice. By sheer gravity they will usually be close.
You saw how the Republicans shifted their positions and spun their story to rein in plutocrats, evangelicals, racists and paranoids into a single critical mass without much common interest. To do that though, they had to alienate women, minorities and the youth and their increasing demographic turned the election.

For once Mr. Mencken was wrong.

 

Yes this.

 

Some would claim the actual criteria is economics, not religion and/or democracy. See Saudi Arabia.

 

Its ok to stereotype white republicans but its not ok for white republicans to stereotype? ok. Gotcha!

Hypocrite. "Typical liberal"

 

If it's a political party, and the policies they put forward indicate that. It's pretty much acceptable for the other political party to make those kinds of statements.

 

Obama was a very weak incumbent that was ripe for the picking but Romney was a pathetic challenger who wasn't up to the task. With some differences, it was the election of 2004 all over again.

 

It wasn't close. This was as good a shot as they could've taken with a motivated base and one of the few figures with moderate appeal and the number of things that would've had to go right was still astronomical.

Democratic candidates have now won 5 of last 6 popular votes as the country gets less white and less rural...

 

Stereotypical statements can be made from either direction so long as they are qualified as such. Many right-wing posters derided the support Obama received from Blacks as "too high," and these discussions are interesting and not banned on this or other message board. Like most Republicans, you live in a delusion and you are making this up because you have no facts on your side. AKA the myth of the "White Victim" that keeps underachieving and racist whites voting Republican despite the Republicans doing nothing for you (exc hating blacks, of course)

 

Wrong! No, it is not ok to stereotype, especially when its not even close. Stating facts are perfectly fine.

Stating 60% of white males voted Romney is ok. Generalizing statements like 60% white males voted for Romney because they are racists is not even remotely ok.

Stating 94% of the black population voted Obama is ok. Generalizing statements like 94% of blacks voted for Obama because Obama is black is wrong.

Stating 40% of the population in prison is black while they make up an est 15% of the population is ok. Stating blacks are more likely to be criminals because they are black is wrong (and of course racist, even though its a stereotype, which according to you, is perfectly fine).

The fact is both sides are full of flaws. Just to clarify, I don't identify with either party. The right wing conspiracy theorists is what drives me away from the Republican party, but its the arrogance in the Liberal Party that disgusts me. I actually lean more towards liberal ideology, but Liberals fail to realize their leaders are absolutely NO different than Republicans.

And just FYI, living most of my life in different southern states, the kooky conservatives I do come across are overwhelmingly more concerned with muslims than blacks. The majority of them have respect for everyone.

 

I've had this argument with my business partner the last few days that he says that this could've been a landslide easily the other way given how close the popular vote was and that many of the swing states were close also. I disagree because while yes the popular vote was close Presidential elections are always fought state by state and this was a big victory for Obama.

While the swing state polls were also close and just taking a snapshot of the polls the day before the election it did look like theoretically that Romney could've also won an electoral landslide the problem with that is that you have to look at trend lines and possible routes towards victory. In my view what prevented a Romney landslide, electorally, was that the trend lines in most of the swing states were going against him and not all of the swing states were really swing states except for outliers in polling, such as MN was never truly a swing state when you looked at all of the polls even without doing a Nate Silver weighting. What that meant was the route to Romney victory was small narrower than Obama. It was always either going to be in the Electoral college:
1. Narrow Obama victory
2. Narrow Romney victory
3. Obama landslide
Taking all of the polls a Romney electoral landslide was a very remote possibility.

So while Romney won big in some states to keep pace with Obama in the popular vote he still got swept in all of the states that were considered swing states this election. What that shows isn't that it was a close election but that we have a fractured electorate with big regional differences but you also have to consider why the swing states are considered swing states. A state like Ohio is crucial because it is a state that appears to straddle the regional ideological differences while NY and AL don't. Obama winning all the swing states show that Obama actually has captured the ideological middle of the country and in that sense it wasn't close.

 

Here is the thing: Neither Obama nor Romney had any reason to spend money or effort on getting votes in "safe Obama" and "safe Romney" states. I didn't see any Obama or Romney ads while spending time in NY and CA this election season and I bet you guys in Texas didn't either. Also, I bet neither Obama nor Romney spend much $ and effort in their GOTV/ground game operations in NY, CA, TX, WA, NJ, TN, etc. Plenty of folks in these states would have turned out to vote had their vote mattered in the Presidential election (in many of these states, the Congressional or even state and local races were not that close).

Anyway, the overall national popular vote isn't very relevant. Had there not been an Electoral College, the sides would have allocated their resources VERY differently and the turnout in various states would have been very different. The candidates would to to places like TX (for Romney) and CA (for Obama) and try to turn out as many votes as possible in these vote-rich areas for the respective camp. They would likely spend less time micro-targeting and turning out votes in what are currently "swing" states. The turnout in CA and TX may be higher than they are in NV and OH.

The popular vote results in a system in which the popular vote does not determine the winner simply is not relevant.

 

This multiplied by 200 billion.

 

It wasn't as much of a squeaker as one might think. Certainly wasn't a blowout like the elections you mentioned, but that's really ever expected in this scenario: incumbent that is personally likeable, but country's mood is not happy.

That said, Obama won nationally by about 3%. Of the swing states, Obama won CO, IA, WI, NV, NH, and VA by larger margins that the overall national vote. It really wasn't that close. Only OH, FL, and NC turned out to be closer than the national margin and that wouldn't have been nearly enough for Romney to win even if he got all 3.

 

Romney won more than 50% of white voters. At best, a few percent of them are one-percenters. If you really think that 45+% of white America is racist and votes based on that racism, you are an idiot.

 

The problem is that all the external forces such as the economy and foreign affairs were in the Republican's favor and they still couldn't pull it off. If the economy is truly on the upswing and the employment gets down into the low 6 percent range by next election, the GOP has no chance in hell of winning the election.

Think about this fact for a second. The GOP candidate has only won one popular vote since 1988 when Bush Sr (a moderate in today's political climate) won. Bush Jr only won in 2004 because of the war. The GOP is in big time trouble if they don't become more inclusive. They need to stop alienating every growing demographic.

 

I'm black and liberal, but I think having lived in predominantly conservative work, social and even academic environments my whole life this rant just seems unfactual and ahistorical. These parties are just too big to be that different, and having one or the other in Executive power for decades on end would more profoundly reveal their capacity for corruption than the wisdom or prudence of their ideas.

 

Lies don't win.

 

Obama's 332 electoral votes vs. Romney's 206 electoral votes

This is "awful close to winning"?

 

Can't put a percentage on it but its safe to say that significant percentage of republicans believe Obama was born in a foreign country simply because of his skin color and/or his foreign/muslim sounding name.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/55-of-republicans-believe-obama-was-born-in-a-foreign-country/

http://pollingmatters.gallup.com/2011/04/americans-beliefs-about-obamas-birth.html