This is an interesting article on the alledged missing 3 million Romney voters:
A score of people this past week have asked me about the three million Republicans allegedly “missing” at the polls this year. For starters, if the Washington Post is to be believed, Mitt Romney received 1.3 million fewer votes than John McCain did in 2008, not 3 million. For the record, Obama received 7.5 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008.
More than 1.1 million of the Republican votes were “lost” in California. It is not that California Republicans turned against Romney. His percentage of the vote was higher than McCain’s in 2008. It is just they know their votes were in vain in that increasingly absurd state. The same is likely true in New York State where Romney fell more than a half-million votes short of McCain’s totals. Excluding these two states, Romney received 300,000 more votes than McCain.
That is important. I can see why Californian Republicans wouldn’t bother to go vote. It pretty much is a waste of time for them. Their time would be better spent on productive things like planning on how they are going to leave the State.
There are anomolies. Apparently in Ohio Romney got nearly 100,000 votes fewer than McCain. Where those votes went is a mystery, and that could have tipped the balance in that state, but that wouldn’t have been enough to win it for Romney.
Related:
Something to think about. Yes, broadening the base is a good idea if it can be done without weakening our message, but remember Romney was Supposed to Broaden the BAse. He was the Massachusetts MOderate, not a member of the Wicked Tea PArty faction. Indeed, he ran away from the Tea PArty as hard as he could. We see how that worked out. Could the Tea PArty have supplied a half-million critical votes in the right states? We’ll never know, but one thing is sure: you can’t win without getting your base out, and Romney failed at that critical task.
Thanks IF -- this explains a lot! An earlier analysis I read said the missing votes were thought to be from ‘swing’ states -- which Cali and NY certainly are not.
@ eaglesoars:
Rodan has said as much, but he didn’t provide any sources for it. It really changes the picture somewhat. However, if those New York and California voters had turned out, it would have denied Obaam a popular vote win, or at least made it far closer. While that wouldn’t have impeded Obama much in his aims against the United States, it would have provided a much needed morale boost for our side. So those voters did hurt. Their turnout mattered for morale even if they couldn’t swing their state into our column.
Iron Fist wrote:
Well, this is just me (and you and wife I know) but I would have voted just out of a fuck-you-defiance.
gotta hop, thanks for the post, it’s important.
@ Iron Fist: The key is having a candidate who can get your base out and pull votes from the other side. That takes both principle and charisma.
@ EBL:
Yep, you have to get your base out first. Romney inexplicably ignored that. He ran away forom the Tea PArty as hard as he could, and it is possible that the Tea PArty could have supplied the critical number of voters in the critical States. It isn’t assured that we could have, but it is certainly possible. The predictible people are saying the predictible things about moderation, but we tried that. We tried it with Romney, with McCain, and with Bob Dole. We even tried it with W, and his father before him. How successful were we with the moderation? W was a moderate and the media savaged him. Romney was a moderate, and look what that got us. Yeah, we need to broaden the base where we can. Outreach to the Hispanic Population is worth persuing, but only when it isn’t done at the expense o Party Principles. We can’t outbid the Democrats with Free Shit. We just can’t. They’ll write the final check that bounces and tips us over into economic collapse, and they’ll do it with a smile.
Romney Lost Because Republicans Behaved Like Undisciplined Clowns.
I don’t agree with many things in that article, but there’s a lot of truth there.
I worked for the Romney campaign in central Florida…. I’ve got some interesting stories.
A lot of other votes were lost due to simple vote theft.
Such as vast numbers of military voters’ absentee ballots that didn’t get back in time -- or never were delivered to the troops.
@ 1389AD:
Yeah, they didn’t want the troops voting, that was clear. I don’t know how much fraud actually affected the vote overall, though. Obama would have lost some, surely, but would it have been enough to turn the tide? I don’t think so. The people voted for free shit. What they are going to get is economic collapse.
@ Iron Fist:
Didn’t I tell you this!
@ Iron Fist:
I did my own research by vote totals.
@ Rodan:
You did indeed, but you didn’t supply the documentation.
@ Iron Fist:
I did comparisons to 2008 and 2012 to see the missing votes. I used CNN’s state by state result. It was hard to put 100 links.
@ Rodan:
Good work!
I certainly went to vote, mostly because we had several ballot propositions. I knew some of them would be passed handily -- such as Moonbeam’s tax on the rich for the children (who will never see a penny -- Moonbeam’s got himself some high-speed rail to finance).
But yes, it seems more and more like it’s a waste of my time. I live in John Garamendi’s district and the professional politician got himself another 2 years -- and we had an excellent Republican candidate, too!
Even with California being a given for Obama, that was no reason for conservatives to stay home, especially with several important initiatives on the ballot. That the electorate here voted to raise taxes by a 2/3rds margin is inexcusable.
@ Carolina Girl:
You beat me to it.
BTW folks -- call for a “support Papa John’s Pizza” day on Friday, Nov. 16th as he’s being called a racist for telling the truth about Obamacare.
Carolina Girl wrote:
We’re all racists now.
//Screw ‘em
Bunk X wrote:
It speaks volumes about the electorate. The rich will, of course, mostly move to saner climes. Where I live we don’t even have a State income tax, and we went for Romney 59-39.
@ Iron Fist:
This was a Jerry Brown “tax on the rich” so of course his gimme my government benefits crowd showed up at the polls to vote it in.
@ Iron Fist:
It’s not like they don’t have examples to look at to see what’s going to happen.
New Jersey implemented a similar “millionaire tax” a few years ago, with projections that it would bring in billions in new revenue.
What actually happened is that revenue decreased, as high income taxpayers packed up and moved.
But hey, maybe it’ll be different this time.
//
I live in a blue state and I voted. I knew Romney wasn’t going to take my state unless a miracle happened. To me it is a lack of American backbone to not vote in a presidential election.
LA goes vegetarian
I think I will go to McDonalds that day and get two cheeseburgers and send them each a wrapper.
If you live in Pennsylvania and the reports of the fraudulent vote county in Phily is correct then Pennsylvanians in the rest of the state are being dis enfranchised in a presidential election in a big way. Your vote was discarded. But the Sandusky effect is in play. This would be just the tip of a nationwide problem. We should ask ourselves why we want to hide from this?