Barack Obama won because he recognized a New America. The President managed only 39 percent of the white vote, the lowest white percentage recorded for a winning national candidate, and suffered a 12-point swing against him among independent voters, but won both the popular vote and an Electoral College landslide […] Read more »
Misreading Election 2012
Postelection talk of “lessons learned” is often exaggerated and misleading, and so it is in 2012. A week after President Obama won re-election, two themes are dominant. First, that Mr. Obama kept his job because key elements of his base—notably young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans—turned out for him. Second, […] Read more »
GOP Grapples With Embarrassing Polling Failures
… Before Election Day, Republicans confidently predicted they would pick up seats in both chambers of Congress, and that Mitt Romney would win the White House. The results shattered those predictions, and with them any sense of security in the numbers coming out of some of the best-regarded polling firms […] Read more »
Red Versus Blue in a New Light
… The maps we have made show that the election was not just about red and blue states. … [C]ontrary to what you have heard, there’s only a strong red America-blue America split toward the top of the income distribution. Toward the bottom, the electoral map is a sea of blue. […] Read more »
Three Keys From the Exit Polls
Given the demographics of the 2008 and 2012 elections, the Republican Party is in danger of becoming the “Win In Off Years Only Party” unless we make a full-throated improvement with Hispanic voters. And, we have to admit it is us, not them. [cont.] Glen Bolger, Public Opinion Strategies Read more »
The GOP Has Problems With White Voters, Too
… Romney’s strong national showing among white voters was almost exclusively driven by historic support from Southern and Appalachian white voters. … Outside the South, Romney’s performance among white voters was anything but historic. He ran behind Bush’s tallies in most of the northern half of the United States. [cont.] […] Read more »